Approaching Personifications In Chinese-to-English Translation Of Expository Texts

Personification,a common rhetorical device that gives the words life,makes them more colorful,and conveys a sense of immersion among readers,is used in various genres of writing,especially literary writing.But in Chinese-to-English translation,sometimes we may encounter a problem.That is,in the original Chinese writing,frequent use of personification can make it more vivid and personal,but when such personification is literally translated into English,or if the translator preserves the personified language in the target text,the result may not be so good.The reason is that Chinese and English as two languages are very different in terms of linguistic and stylistic conventions.As far as the expository genre is concerned,English is much more impersonal than Chinese in tone.This requires the translator to de-personalize the language while keeping the vividness and spirituality of original.This report is based on my translation of the book Note in the Air(Chapters 1-2).The book published by China Civil Aviation Press is an elaborate introduction to Civil Aviation,including its history,the international and domestic airline market system,notes to passengers,and so forth.Its content is comprehensive and its language is concise,vivid and humorous.It is a very convenient book for domestic and foreign passengers travelling by air.Based on such practice,this report is to explore approaches to personifications in Chinese-to-English translation of expository texts through analyzing the translated sentences,which can be of some help to translation in this field.Three methods are used,namely,literature review,case study and comparative study.Firstly,based on the research results about expository texts and personification of English and Chinese,the differences and similarities are found.Secondly,the application of some strategies is presented in the translation project to find approaches to personifications in Chinese-to-English translation of expository texts.Thirdly,through comparison and analysis,suitable methods for translating personification in the expository text are summed up.It is obvious that although this book is an expository technical text,a large number of personifications are used.The translation criteria of "faithfulness" may not be able to work here.On the contrary,the translator should flexibly deal with the personifications that frequently appear in the Chinese source text through proper techniques of adaptation so that the translation can fit the different characteristics of English,such as preference to objective and static expressions instead of subjective and dynamic as in Chinese,and meet the customer requirements.Five ways of de-personification are presented,i.e.,conversion of humans to objects,change of sentence constituent,relevance conversion,appropriate omission and appropriate addition.