A Tentative Study Of Annotations In Translation

Due to the difficulties that translators encounter in practical translation,various translators owns their preference for choosing strategies in accordance with the whole context. One common strategy in both China and the West is annotation which frequently exists in translated books. Annotation is one act or process of furnishing critical commentary or explanatory notes. It is a kind of linguistic explanation appearing in some places of the work. Recent research works on this topic mostly discussed the characteristics of annotation, such as the concept, classification and principle.Not limited to the simple theoretic discussion about annotation, this thesis will mainly aim at analyzing the practical application in several versions of one work. There are reasons why Gulliver's Travels was chosen as the object of study. On the one hand, as the masterpiece of Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels has been done massive researches, most of which is concerned with the literary aspects. It is necessary to study this famous novel from other angles. On the other hand, many translators have completed different translated versions which provide the convenient condition for further research. The present editions include not only literature translation in the strict sense but also the translation for children as well as some English teaching materials. This thesis chooses unabridged translation versions as the object of study.The framework of the study is concrete research about the annotations in Gulliver's Travels. This thesis consists of three parts, i.e. the introduction, three chapters, and the conclusion.Introduction begins with a general idea of annotation, situation of its present study and its significance. The object and research methodology of this thesis is also presented.Chapter Two begins with the definition of annotation, its categories and its necessity, providing a basis for the better comprehension of further analysis. The later part of it introduces the pluses and minuses of using annotation.Chapter Three elaborates the relations between annotation and two main theory. By introducing the core concepts of culture, culture and translation, culture and annotation, concepts and key rules of Skopostheorie as well as Skopostheorie and annotation, this chapter analyses the annotation's role in the process of transmitting cultural information and achieving the intended purpose of translation.Chapter Four is a case study. The former part of this chapter introduces Jonathan Swift's life experiences and the content of Gulliver's Travels. Translators choosing annotations are different, both in number and the content. Some favor more annotations to explain the historical background of the book, and some just use relatively a few to transmit the main information of the original book. The third part of this chapter compares and analyses examples of annotation in several different Chinese versions of Gulliver's Travels, which is expected to provide some certain reference value for future translators.Chapter Five draws a conclusion about the findings and limitations of this study, as well as suggestions for further studies.As a bold and inclusive attempt, this paper hopes to throw light on further studies in this area and awaits improvement by others.