A Report On The English-Chinese Translation Practice Of Rascals In Paradise(Chapter One)

This paper is a report on the translation practice of Rascals in Paradise,a novel written by American writers James A.Michener and A.Grove Day.The novel,spanning several centuries,tells stories of several South Sea explorers with ten independent chapters.The book contains the history,geography and little-known stories about Pacific islands,which show a strong literary flavor of the South Pacific and provides research ideas for South Pacific literature.Furthermore,the Mili language spoken by Mili natives in the book is quite different from English,which is also an important reference for linguistic research.The first chapter mainly focuses on a harpooner called Sam Comstock about his mutiny on the whaling ship Globe and his tragic ending.This book portrays the full and distinctive characters in a smooth and simple style.For this kind of novel text,it is difficult for the translator to faithfully present historical background information,reflect the image characteristics of different characters,meanwhile vividly reproduce the linguistic style of the original and attract target language readers.In the light of these problems,on the basis of the translation of the first chapter of Rascals in Paradise,this paper adopts Eco-translatology theory proposed by Professor Hu Gengshen as guidance,and uses “three-dimensional transformation” translation method to analyze the translation,which involves three dimensions.First,language dimension.The translator attaches importance to the choice of words,and strives for idiomatic and smooth language expression,so as to balance the whole translational eco-environment from the two aspects of lexical ecology and syntactic ecology.Second,communicative dimension.The translator focuses on the achievement of communicative effect and more coherent logic of the translation through cohesive means,such as conjunction and reference.When translating conversation between characters,the translator tries to reproduce the linguistic style of the original and reflect the character characteristics by taking the communicative ecology of the original and the translation into account;Third,cultural dimension.The translator pays attention to convey cultural connotation of the original.Specific ways are applied to the translation of surface and middle-level cultural heterogeneity factors,such as footnotes,thereby making the target language readers accurately understand the original.Thanks to the above three dimensions,the translator obtains the translation with a higher “degree of holistic adaptability and selection”.Throughout the whole translation practice,the translator has a deeper understanding of the “three-dimensional transformation” method of Eco-translatology theory.Cases in the report involves not only the transformation of a single dimension,but also that of the other two dimensions,which requires the translator to comprehensively consider many aspects during the translation and use appropriate ways to realize the integration among “translator”,“text” and “environment”.At the same time,the translator is aware that translators should not be afraid of hardships and improve ourselves constantly.We should adhere to a rigorous and serious attitude towards every translation practice to strive for perfection.