Report On The Translation Of Sonny’s Blues

This report is a translation practice on Sonny’s Blues. It is also an introduction and summary of thetranslation.Sonny’s Blues is written by James Baldwin, one of the most important African American writers in the20th century. This short story tells the story of a pair of African brothers. In spite of all sorts of ideas ofdifferent divisions and mutual misunderstanding for a long time and even nearly leading to dudevorce,music brings them together. They are representative of countless black people and embody the thoughts,feelings and strong desire of the pursuit of freedom and equality of black people at that era.This report is mainly composed of four parts, the introduction, the background of the report,background of the research, difficulties and methods of the translation and summary. The introduction,including the meaning, sources and reporting structure of the project, is the generalization of this report. Inview of the domestic current situation of the translation, by looking for relative references on internet, thetranslator did not find any Chinese translation of this short story. So she chose to translate this short story,hoping to make people learn some good but unknown foreign works for ordinary people and make her ownlittle contribution for the Chinese and western cultural exchange. Research background of the thesis isintroduced in the second part, including introduction of the author, theoretical framework, and the mainideas of the story. People can have a better understanding of the author and the content of the short story.The related theory that is used during the process of translation, namely, functional equivalence theory isintroduced. Nida’s functional equivalence mainly discusses on the effect of translation during the process ofthe source language into the target language. That is to say, translation is not rigid corresponding of the texton the surface but to achieve functional equivalence between two languages. This is the theoretical basis ofthe translation task. The third part is encountered difficulties in the process of translating projects, such asabstract words. There are a lot of words which are too difficult to understand for the translator though shethought them over. In order to express the true feeling of the original writer to achieve formal equivalenttranslation, the translator needs to refer to the article constantly, to depend on the translator’s understandingof the article and to select the exact Chinese words to express the meaning of the English words. In describing objects and events, the writer uses a lot of detailed and accurate description, interspersed withthe psychological activity, the inner world of the characters. Under the theory of style equivalence, thewriter tries to find out the style of the English text so that she can achieve style equivalence. In addition, asfor the religious culture, the translator uses the method of adding and noting to help the reader tounderstand the original culture. This part is the main part of this report. The final part is a summary of theexperience in the process of translation and the problems still to be solved are also pointed out. Forexample, a good translation should be faithful to the original, and maintain the original style. It is hard forthe translator to find a balance point to achieve both. They are often in a dilemma.