Readability Of Memoir Translation At The Lexical And Syntactic Levels

This report is based on the translation practice of In the Eye of the Storm,written by Kurt Waldheim,the fourth Secretary-General of the United Nations.This book consists of 19 chapters,offering a thoughtful account of Waldheim’s role in world affairs and international crises during his time in office.The excerpts of study(Chapter7,11 and 14)respectively introduce crises in Africa,Iran and Lebanon,where a large number of personal pronouns,culture-loaded words,passive sentences as well as parentheses are employed,which have been major difficulties during the process of translation.Under the guidance of readability,this report discusses on how to apply different translation approaches to these words and sentences by elaborating specific examples in this memoir.Holding the view that readability at the lexical level and syntactic levels can be interpreted as being accurate and fluent,conforming to the expression habits of the target language without ambiguity,the report claims that: from the lexical level,when there exists ambiguity due to the personal pronouns in the original text,personal pronouns can be translated into nouns they refer to or omitted;because of the culture difference and different expression habits between Chinese and English,some English culture-loaded words can be translated into words that conform to Chinese culture;from the syntactic level,English passive sentences can be translated into Chinese semi-implicit passive sentences and Chinese active sentences according to different situations;when encountering parentheses,fronting,linear translation and addition can be adopted according to their functions as well as the logical relationship between the parentheses and other sentences.The report is intended to improve the readability of the translation text and provide some ideas for future translation practice.