A Practice Report On The Translation Of Echoes Of Silence (Parts 2 & 3)

Malaysia has been one of the major destinations for Chinese immigrants since ancient times due to its geographical accessibility. There are many literary works written by Chinese-Malaysian writers to record their overseas life, while few of such English novels have been translated into Chinese. The translation of the English novel, Echoes of Silence (parts 2 & 3) written by Chuah Guat Eng, is to introduce the overseas life of Chinese Malaysians to Chinese readers.The report analyzes how to reproduce characters’ images in the translation. The successful reproduction of characters’ images is based on the reproduction of the characters’ appearance, action, conversation and psychology depiction. Correct comprehension of the author’ s attitude towards the characters helps with the exact reproduction of the characters’appearance; the translator needs to pay particular attention to verbs and the special sentence structures in the source text so that the reproduction of the actions can reflect the personalities of the characters; the translated conversation needs to match the characters’ identities, emotions and specific occasions; and when it comes to the reproduction of the psychological depiction, an understanding of the author’s different intentions in using direct and indirect speech better reproduces the characters’ state of mind.The reproduction of characters’ images is crucial in novel translation. Only when the translator takes into consideration the different aspects of the characters’ images and makes painstaking efforts for proper diction and sentence structures, can the characters impress the target readers through the translation.