A Report On The Translation Of Echoes Of Silence (Part 1)

In fiction translation, translators may sometimes change the linguistic form of the original so as to produce a smooth translation. This approach, however, may result in failure to reproduce the aesthetic and thematic functions intended by the author of the original text, thus leading to deceptive equivalence. Such a problem can be solved with the help of literary stylistics, in which a detailed stylistic analysis of the original text is required to retain the stylistic functions in the translation.The translation of the English novel Echoes of Silence (Part 1) by Chuah Guat Eng, a Chinese-Malaysian writer, is done under the guidance of literary stylistics, aî–´d a report is written on the process of the translation practice. The report conducts a detailed stylistic analysis of the original from the following three aspects:lexis, syntax and narrative discourse. The lexical aspect includes primacy effect and objectivity, and foreign words; the syntactical aspect covers syntax and prominence, and syntactic rhetoric; the aspect of narrative discourse involves direct speech/thought and free direct speech/thought. The report analyzes the problem of deceptive equivalence in the first translation draft, and points out how the final translation avoids such a problem and produces a translation that is faithful to the original text in form and content with equal stylistic functions.