E-C Translation Of The First Part Of Someone And A Critical Commentary

This report is based on the E-C translation of the beginning part of Someone, a novel by Alice McDermott, an American woman writer and a Humanities professor of Johns Hopkins University who has published7novels and won a National Book Award in1998with her novel Charming Billy. Someone was also in the final list nominated for2013National Book Award. The novel is about the life of an Irish-American woman named Marie. The beginning part is a flashback starting from an ordinary day when Marie was7years old, and then it moves to scenes of the Irish community where she lives. This part paves the way for what happens later in the story and is therefore important in telling readers how Marie grows up and how her character is shaped.In executing the project, the translator encounters many problems which in the report are listed as:(1).Lexical problems. At the lexical level, the meanings of some words and expressions go well beyond dictionary definitions, which make it hard for the translator to understand, let alone to translate them.(2) Syntactic problems. At the syntactic level, some sentences in this novel are elliptical or complex, leading to comprehension difficulties on the part of the translator;(3) Textual problems. At the textual level, the translator has to consider the translated text as a whole and try to make different parts in the text conform to the same stylistic caliber so that the text becomes more readable.The report includes two parts. The first part contains an attachment of the source text and its Chinese translation and the second part is the critical commentary about the problems the translator has encountered and her solutions to them. To overcome the problems the translator has drawn on theories and skills of translation which she has learned so far as a MTI student, especially Eugene Nada’s Functional Equivalence Theory. To resolve the lexical problems, for instance, it is argued that the word choosing and conversion must be based on the accurate comprehension of the original text and any divergence of meaning from dictionary definition should be dealt with in the light of the context. To resolve the syntactic problems, it is suggested that recasting and division of sentences be adopted as possible strategies. Recasting is the rearrangement of the structure of the sentence for the purpose of making the translation more fluent and readable. Division is to reproduce the original sentence with two or more sentences in the target language which is mainly adopted in elliptical sentences. To cope with the textual problems, amplification and combination are suggested as main strategies. By amplification we mean certain words or information are added in the target text in order to fully bring out the meaning of the source text. By combination we mean to put together some short clauses or phrases that express the same meaning and make them a whole.The project is significant in that it attempts to bring to the attention of Chinese readers a contemporary American writer who enjoys a high reputation in her own country yet has failed to gain any Chinese recognition. It is hoped that the project may make up for the gap.