A Report On The Translation Of What Passes As Love(Chapters 42-48)

This is a report on English-Chinese translation practice project.The source text is excerpted from the historical novel What Passes As Love,written by Trisha R.Thomas.The story told in this novel takes place in the middle and late 19 th century in the United States.The heroine,Dahlia Holt,is the child of Holt and a slave.She is forced to move from Holt plantation to Ross manor by accident and becomes the mistress of Ross manor.Later,her childhood sweetheart,the slave Bowman may lose his life,so she and Bowman escape from Ross manor to the north,looking for a heaven of freedom.The novel uses the first person and the third person alternately,telling a series of stories having happened to the heroine in pursuit of freedom from multiple perspectives.This project chooses the last seven chapters of the novel,about 12,000 words.The main plot is that Dahlia finally makes up her mind to escape from Ross manor.And then her half-sisters unexpectedly come to Ross manor to attend the banquet,which promotes the progress of her run.Dahlia sets out for the north with her childhood sweetheart,Bowman.The original text is a historical novel and the content is relatively simple.However,due to the differences between English and Chinese,it is not easy to understand the original text completely.For literary translation,it is necessary to make great efforts to understand the characters in the original text,carefully analyse the characteristics of the characters in the original text,and dynamically display their words and characteristics in the translation.In addition,there are a lot of dialogues in the original text,so how to accurately translate the content of dialogues and reflect the characteristics and differences between characters through the translation of dialogues also requires the translator’s continuous thinking.Therefore,during this translation practice,the translator should precisely recreate the original culture,the original flavor of the source text,and the thinking process of the original author’s diction.Considering this,Peter Newmark’s semantic translation strategy is designated as the guiding theory of this translation practice project.However,Newmark advocates that communicative translation and semantic translation should not be isolated,but should be combined.Therefore,in order not to be too rigid in the original text and to make the translation smooth,concise,and more consistent with customary expression,communicative translation strategies should also be supplemented.Meanwhile,with amplification,omission,free translation and other translation methods,the translator tries to solve lexical,grammatical problems,and problems in sentence meaning and other aspects in this translation practice.The source text is a historical novel.The writing and translation of historical novel does not only have the value of collecting historical data,but more importantly,it can provide reference for future generations,serve for real life,and inspire and educate readers of source languages and target languages.