A Report On The Translation Of Lifting The Chaderi:My Life As An Afghan Refugee(Excerpts)

This translation report is based on Lifting My Chaderi: My Life as an Afghan Refugee(Excerpts)by Anisa Mahmoud Ulrich,an Afghan-American writer.In this book,the author recalls her childhood and adolescent memories in Afghanistan.She also recounts her exile journey from Afghanistan to the United States,the experience of overcoming mental disturbance,culture shock,attaining financial independence,resisting domestic violence,and ushering in a brand-new life.This book contains vivid characters,twisted storyline,plentiful dialogues,and delicate monologues.Unneglectable as it is,the language of this book is plain,unaffected,colloquial,and vivid.In the light of the documentary nature and the cross-regional,cross-ethnic,and cross-cultural features,the translation is expected to be faithful and elegant.To this end,the translator resorts to Jef Verschueren’s adaptation theory as the theoretical guidance of this report.Jef Verschueren’s linguistic adaptation theory describes language phenomena and usage from contextual correlates of adaptation,structural objects of adaptation,dynamics of adaptation and salience of adaptation process,which offers guidance for literary translation.Based on adaptation theory,the translator puts forward a theoretical model,which demonstrates the choice-making process of adapting to the cognitive context of both the source and the target text in the translation report.It also illustrates how to balance the documentary nature and the rich literary flavor during translation and what translation effect has been achieved.Combined with specific examples,this translation report makes a detailed analysis from the perspectives of communicative context adaptation(physical world,social world,and psychological world),structural objects of adaptation(phonetic,lexical,syntactic,and textual levels)and the translator’s salience during the adaptation process.This report proves that adaptation theory is of strong explanatory power to the literary translation.Under the guidance of adaptation theory,it further summarizes translation methods and techniques in the process of translation.More than ten commonly-used translation techniques and skills are employed to overcome the obstacles encountered during the translation process,such as annotation,amplification,omission,reconstruction,etc.The translation practice report is divided into five parts.Chapter One is an overview of the translation practice report,including the background,purpose and significance of the translation task,brief introduction of documentary literature,immigrant literature,the source text,and the author.Chapter Two gives the description of the translation process,including pre-translation preparation,difficulties and coping strategies during translation and proofreading.Chapter Three is an introduction to the theoretical basis,the application of adaptation theory in literary translation and its feasibility to guide biography literature translation.Chapter Four delves into the case study,in which choice-making process,translation strategies and effect are explored from three perspectives of adaptation theory.Chapter Five is the conclusion of the translation report,which consists of reflections,findings limitations and suggestions for further studies.