A Report On E-C Translation Of Skin Of The Sea (Excerpts)

With the development of globalization and more frequent cultural exchanges among countries,fantasy literature has become a popular literary genre as a latecomer.The popularity of fantasy literature has led more and more Chinese readers to get in touch with and enjoy this literary genre.In this translation practice report,the text the translator chooses to translate is Chapter One to Six of the fantasy novel Skin of the Sea,written by British author Natasha Bowen.This novel is set in West Africa in the 15 th century and tells an epic fantasy love story about mermaids.The first six chapters introduce the background of the story and the meeting of the hero and heroine.Skin of the Sea,a fantasy novel,is characterized by simple diction but the presence of some foreign words,utterances with fantastical mystery but high readability,discourse containing many dialogues,and putting emphasis on character descriptions and environmental descriptions.Since novel translation is a process of making constant appropriate choices based on different contexts,the translator introduces the Adaptation Theory of Jef Verschueren as the guidance of translation.In the translation process,the translator should adapt to the context,so that readers can deeply understand the characters and language features of the source text.When translating Skin of the Sea,the combination of domestication and foreignization is adopted,and a variety of translation techniques are used,such as addition,omission,shift and paraphrase,to adapt to the communicative context and language context.Through the analysis of translation cases in the source text,the translator discusses the applicability of Contextual Adaptation Theory in the translation of fantasy novels.The translator hopes that this translation practice can provide a reference for the translation of the fantasy novel Skin of the Sea and offer new ideas for the subsequent translation practice of the same genre.This translation report is divided into four parts.Firstly,it introduces the translation background,purpose and significance of Skin of the Sea and the structure of this translation practice report;Secondly,it introduces the translator’s translation process,which is divided into pre-translation,while-translation and post-translation;Thirdly,it analyzes the translation cases from the perspective of communicative context and linguistic context;Finally,it is concluded that the translator should adopt appropriate translation strategies and methods in the process of translation,and make reasonable adaptation according to the communicative context and linguistic context,so as to make the target readers better understand the original text.