A Report On The Translation Of Meridian Under The Guidance Of The Communicative Translation Theory

Alice Walker is an outstanding American writer and Pulitzer Prize winner.Meridian,written by Alice Walker,is a classic novel which has received widespread attention since its publication.This is a report on translating the novel from Chapter Four to Chapter Twelve.Newmark's communicative translation theory is adopted as the theoretical basis in this translation practice.The translator has applied the communicative translation theory in translating English novels by analyzing the specific strategies to difficulties encountered in the process of translating Meridian.This report aims to analyze three major difficulties occurred in the process of translating the original text from English to Chinese:how to understand the critical words in the original novel and choose appropriate words in the translation,how to deal with the long sentences and dialogues and conversations in the novel.The translator has discussed the difficulties at the lexical,syntactic and dialogical levels and then analyses how to adopt proper translation methods and strategies so as to achieve the communicative effect in the rendering.This translation report concludes that,at the lexical level,the translation should be consistent with the Chinese expressions while maintaining the loyalty to the source text.At the syntactic level,the methods of division and readjusting the sentence structure without rigidly adhering to the original form can make the translation fluent and clear.With regard to dialogues and conversations in the original text,the translator has found it critical to correctly convey the deep meaning and tone of characters so as to improve the reading experience of the target readers.In short,on the basis of communicative translation theory,the translator has a more profound understanding of the source text,maters the major skills of literary translation and applies them flexibly and meaningfully in the translation of Meridian so that the rendering can be better accepted by target readers.