A Report On The Translation Of The Rainbow Comes And Goes(Excerpts)

The translation practice of The Rainbow Comes and Goes:A Mother and a Son on Life,Love and Loss is written by Anderson Cooper,which is the No.1 New York Times bestseller in 2016.The book tells us a story about a mother and a son,whose relationship has changed from past to now.The book is written in first-person,including a few emails between the mother and the son,which depicts readers the original image of their lives and psychology during childhood,adulthood and after marriage.Before the translation,I read the whole book and deeply understand the first two chapters.I found that the author uses a lot of words with abundant emotions,which strengthen the changes between them.In translation,in order to express the strong emotions and complicated psychologies of the protagonists,the translator turned some words into four-character phrases.In addition,I found that a large number of words which show psychology and emotions can be translated into four-character phrases.On the one hand,four-character phrases are well-structured and rhythmical;on the other hand,four-character phrases have its own aesthetic sense,which make readers rise responsive chord.Generally speaking,four-character phrases can be divided into categories of set phrases and free phrases.A simple definition given by Chen Hongwei,in her book Essential Translation from Chinese into English is“four-character phrases that are composed of four characters”.According to the Chinese Grammar and Rhetorical Dictionary,a four-character phrase is a set pattern which is composed of four characters.In narrow sense,four-character phrases refer to fixed idioms,which are stable in structure and meaning,such as“????”,“????”;In broad sense,idioms and free phrases are included,such as“????”,“????”.In this paper,four-character phrases refer to set four-character phrases and free four-character phrases.Set phrases refer to some idiomatic phrases,which cannot be separated at any time.Free phrases refer to phrases which can be separated into two parts.Under the guidance of Eugene A.Nida's functional equivalence theory,the report mainly analyzed some words from translation of personality description,psychology description and emotional description.Through functional equivalence theory of Nida,the translator polished the translation again and again,making the translation loyal to the sourcetext and applies to the target language and its culture.The translator analyzes the translation from three aspects,including the translation of personality description,psychological description and emotional description.The process can effectively raise the speed and quality.The report will be beneficial for the further study of translation from English to Chinese and vice versa.