An English-chinese Translation Report On Selected Articles From The New Yorker

The New Yorker, established by American editor Harold Ross and his wife Jane Grant, is one of the most classic old-brand humanities publications of America. In this magazine, the column "The Talk of the Town" is the soul and can be regarded as a kaleidoscope of American culture and way of living. Recently, there gradually forms a trend of reading and researching The New Yorker in China. However, as this magazine has no Chinese editions, there are some difficulties for Chinese readers and researchers to read the original text. Thus, the translation of The New Yorker into Chinese is of great significance. Besides, the translation can also serve as an effective way to promote Sino-foreign cultural exchanges. On account of this, by carrying out this translation practice and research, the author expects to build a bridge for cultural communications between China and America, to bring conveniences for Chinese readers to read and study the magazine and to provide some references for domestic child care and language development programs.This report is based on the English-Chinese translation of two articles, “The Talking Cure” and “Difference Maker”, selected from the column “The Talk of the Town”. Although they share the same topic of kids’ education and future development,“The Talking Cure” features informative function, while “Difference Maker” features expressive function. When translating these two texts of different text types, the author comes across some difficulties in the translation of titles and subtitles,non-technical words and proper names, long sentences and rhetoric. To cope with the above difficulties, the author takes Peter Newmark’s Text Typology as guidance and divides the texts into informative text and expressive text. According to Newmark,communicative translation strategy(CT) applies to informative text while semantic translation strategy(ST) applies to expressive texts. Therefore, the author translates the two texts with the help of CT and ST respectively and flexibly applies corresponding translation skills such as deduction, combination, embedding, recasting,splitting-off, linear translation and free translation plus annotation etc. to tackle withthe four types of translation difficulties.