Travelogue Translation Based On Narrative Theory

A Voyage to the East Indies,written by Charles Frederick,is a travelogue that introduces the author’s experiences during his voyage from Gravesend to the East Indies.A prominent characteristic of the original text is that it involves a lot of narratives and descriptions and belongs to a documentary literature featuring with both authentic and literary writing.In the process of translation,the author needs to accurately convey the message of the original text and vividly reproduce the narrative and its effects.In the process of translation,there are four main problems and challenges.Firstly,it is difficult to overcome obstacles caused by time,space,knowledge background and other factors in translation as the book was written long ago.Secondly,as there are many words bearing the author’s personal affections or implied sarcasm in the source language,it is hard to precisely translate these words into the target language so as to faithfully convey the author’s opinions and feelings.Thirdly,it is necessary to decide how to deal with the narrative ambiguity in the original text and correctly position the reference in translation.Finally,there are a lot of characters and events leading to variable narrative perspectives in the original text,how to reproduce author’s narrative voice in translation needs consideration.To solve the above problems,this translation project mainly adopts Mona Baker’s narrative theory and Shen Dan’s classification of narrative perspectives.Baker’s narrative theory includes temporal and spatial framing,selective appropriation of textual material,framing by labeling and repositioning of participants.Firstly,reading obstacles due to different time,space and culture can be overcome by adding footnotes explaining special-temporal and cultural information.Then,specific words and punctuations can be used in the target language in order to convey the author’s affection and evoke readers’ empathy.Moreover,selective appropriation of textual material is realized through the translation methods of addition and omission to suppress or highlight some narration of the original text.In addition,repositioning the referent and the register serve as reasonable solution for narrative ambiguity in the original text.And lastly,on the basis of Shen Dan’s classification of narrative perspectives,the narrative perspectives in the original text are analyzed so as to reproduce the original narrative effect in the translation.