A Report On The Translation Of Killing Reagan (Chapters 1 & 2)

Ronald Wilson Reagan served as the 40th President of the United States from 1981 to 1989. Before entering into politics, Reagan worked as a sports announcer on several regional radio stations, lifeguard, newspaper columnist, actor and inspirational lecturer. He was the oldest President to take office and the only one who once was a movie actor in American history, whose life experiences were full of legend. Reagan's presidency has greatly influenced American culture in 1980s and this period of time is called The Reagan Era or Age of Reagan by historians and political observers.There are many publications on Reagan at home and abroad, including the book Killing Reagan, from which the original text of this translation report is taken. The book was first published in September 22,2015 in the US and ranks in the first 65 of the all best sellers and first three of political best sellers in 2015 in Amazon.com. Centered on historical figures, Killing Reagan reproduces the historical events and anecdotes related to these people with rich content, detailed arguments and vivid language, creating high readability. This book is categorized into nonfiction and biographical literature due to its real time, people, places and events in history. And it has not only the description of the personalities of characters, language style, inner thoughts and actions, but also the depiction of the scenes of events.Based on the translated text of Killing Reagan (Chapters 1 & 2) and taking Peter Newmark's translation theory as a guide, this translation report explores the approaches to obstacles encountered in the translation process, sums up the translation rules and methods of nonfiction and biographical literature and provides directions for future translation practice. According to Newmark's text typology, the translator decides that the main function of the original text is expressive function, so the translation strategy should be dominated by semantic translation and supplemented by communicative translation. And the translator should accurately convey the points of view of the original writer and try to achieve faithfulness. The original text is very professional in language and well organized, so the translator has made great efforts to specifically transmit the writers' opinions and reproduce the text style on the basis of sincerity. Meanwhile, the translator should take into consideration the feelings and reactions of target readers and make them better understand the thoughts of the original writer.