A Report On The Translation Of Remembering Christmas

With the flourishing of literature in China and in the whole world, literary translation is figuring prominently in the field of translation. It has to be realized,however, that, although literary translation is being conducted frequently, it is not without its problems. Often, translators do not have an adequate command of translation procedures, rules and techniques. With the growth of translation studies on the whole, the study of literary translation has progressed greatly, resulting in the increasing number of papers or books from a theoretical orientation or papers reporting on translation practice without theoretical analysis. Reports and studies of literary translation so far are, however, simultaneously handicapped by two extremes in methodology, i.e., either being purely theoretical speculations or being solely practical reflections.Oriented to the practice of literary translation, targeted to the problems in the report and study of literary translation, this report attempts to provide a systemic description and analysis of the author’s personal practice of translating Remembering Christmas from English into Chinese through the incorporated methodology of theory-based case analysis on the basis of Jia Zhengchuan’s Systemic Translation Procedure and German Functionalism. Firstly, the report makes a description and inspection of the procedure of the translation practice with reference to Systemic Translation Procedure to check whether it is well done or not. It is found that the process of the author’s translation is to a great degree adequate for literary translation because it coincides with the four steps prescribed in Systemic Translation Procedure in most cases though not in all cases. Secondly, the report presents a depiction and examination of the application of rules and techniques in the translation of Remembering Christmas from the perspective of German Functionalism to see whether the rules and techniques applied are appropriate. It is shown that the author’s translation has followed principles and used methods that accord with the three rulesprescribed by Skopostheorie in most places though not in some places.This report will hopefully be relevant both practically and theoretically. Practically,its findings will demonstrate that efficient translation is guaranteed when the translator follows Systemic Translation Procedure and observes the three rules of Skopostheorie through the application of appropriate techniques of translation. Theoretically, its methodology may help to improve the methods in the systematic description and analysis of literary translation practice.