A Report On E-C Translation Of Eight Men(Excerpt)

This translation project is a subproject of the E-C translation of Richard Wright’s works,namely the translation of his collection of tales Eight Men.As a member of the project team,the author undertakes the translation of the last four stories under the guidance of her supervisor Prof.Bo Zhenjie.And this report is based on the translation practice of the sixth story entitled Man.God Ain’t Like That.In this story,a white painter traveled to Africa and knocked down a black boy named Babu.He brought Babu back to Paris because Babu was good at singing hymns,which gave him a lot of inspiration.But he was finally mistaken for God and was killed by Babu.It is worthy of noting that the 10 hymns Babu sings play a very important role in this story.They not only correspond with his mood,but also connect the whole story.More importantly,they are the difficult points of the translation project.That is the very reason why this report mainly probes into hymnal translation.Considering the high similarity between hymn and poetry as well as the client’s translation brief that the translation should be faithful to the source text and conform to the Chinese expression with fluency,the author adopts Prof.Xu Yuanchong’s"Triple Beautys" theory as the guiding principle.She analyzes the context to fathom Babu’s mood in order to convey the message beauty of the original.She uses some concrete techniques such as the replacement of synonyms,change of word order and sentence structure,as well as the repetition of the vowels and initial consonants to reproduce the prosodic beauty.She endeavors to achieve image beauty in the target language on the premise that the beauty in sense and sound has been guaranteed.And the realization of "Triple Beauty" will make the reader "understand" the translation,"like" it and "be fascinated" by it.This report is a tentative exploration of the combination of "Triple Beauty" theory and hymnal translation.The author hopes that it will provide some referential value for hymnal translation.