A Report On The Translation Of The Infant System From The Perspective Of Newmark’s Communicative Translation Theory

This thesis is a report based on the translation of The Infant System,an educational work written by Samuel Wilderspin who had been taking great pains to promote infant education(education to the child from one to seven years of age)all his life in the United Kingdom and other European countries,from the perspective of Newmark’s translation theory.This book comprehensively introduces the reason for and the goal of promoting infant education,the teaching content,principles and methods of infant education,in order to popularize his teaching philosophy.The language of this book is very vivid.It is featured by plain language,rich content with detailed examples and good readability.From the lexical perspective,this book contains many abstract nouns,religious terms and impersonal pronouns.From the syntactical perspective,it contains lots of long sentences,irregular sentences,negative sentences and sentences in passive voice.At the rhetorical level,it has lots of figures of speech such as parallelisms,alliteration and rhymes,etc.This report,based on the case study of translation of the fifth and the tenth chapter of The Infant System,mainly explores the feasibility and applicability of Peter Newmark’s communicative translation theory to solve the problem in the translation from such three aspects as lexis,syntax and figures of speech.Newmark proposed that different translation methods should be adopted according to different text types,and that the purpose of translation(the purpose of both the author of the original text and the translator),readers and text type be taken into consideration altogether.The Infant system,as an educational work,is supposed to make the reader informed of some original ideas in infant education.The author of this report,through careful and detailed analysis,holds that the text can be classified as informative text and is proper to be translated within the framework of the communicative translation theory,which focuses essentially upon the comprehension and response ofthe target reader and attempts to produce on its readers an effect as close as possible to that obtained on the readers of the original.The methods and techniques employed in the translation include semantic extension,conversion,translating the abstract connotation with concrete images or expressions,amplification and other methods at the lexical level;conversion from passive voice to active voice and from impersonal subject to personal one,changing the word order of the original text,division,affirmation,amplification and using the Chinese four-character structure at the syntactic level;and free translation and rhyme for the rhetoric to reproduce the equivalent effect as the original does.This report falls into seven chapters: the first chapter introduces the significance of the project and its content;the second chapter presents the preparation,process and proofreading of the translation.The third chapter reviews the research on The Infant System,and Newmark’s translation theory and its application.The fourth chapter elaborates on Newmark’s semantic translation and communicative translation,offering the theoretical basis for the report.In the fifth chapter,the textual features are analyzed lexically,syntactically and rhetorically;and in the sixth chapter,detailed accounts of how they are treated are offered by giving specific examples under the guidance of communicative translation theory.The last chapter is a summary of the whole translation.In conclusion,communicative translation is found very effective in dealing with such informative text.