A Report On The Translation Of The Sellout Guided By Communicative Translation Theory

The translation material for this report is selected from American writer Paul Beatty’s novel The Sellout.The book won the Man Booker Prize in 2016 and has not yet been translated into Chinese.With irony and humor,the novel tells the story of a black American youth’s life.The novel focuses on racism in the United States,with rich words,various sentence patterns and complex structures.Culture-loaded words and long and complex sentences can be found everywhere,which are the difficult points in this translation practice.Peter Newmark proposes six functions of language,namely expressive function,informative function,vocative function,aesthetic function,phatic function,and metalingual function.Then,he classifies all texts into three types according to their language functions,namely expressive text,informative text and vocative text.The corresponding translation methods are given according to different text types.Semantic translation is usually applied to expressive text,while communicative translation is applied to informative text and vocative text.When translating,the translator takes Peter Newmark’s communicative translation theory which emphasizes the effect of information transmission and reader-oriented translation as the main guide,pays attention to the analysis of the source text characteristics,and sums up a series of specific translation strategies to solve the major difficulties in this translation practice,so as to provide a better translation for the target language readers.Through this translation practice,the author finally finds that language is the most important symbol system in human communication.People use language symbols to convey complex information.As a tool of communication,language not only carries the meaning that the expresser wants to express,but also has the communicative function.In terms of the humorous and ironic feature of the text,translation under the guidance of communicative translation theory can better exert its function of arousing readers’ interest and perceiving readers’will.This report consists of four parts:the first part introduces research background,the author and the novel,as well as the characteristics of the selected material in this report.The second part describes the translation process by introducing the theoretical basis of translation report,the feasibility of translation guidance and the problems encountered in this translation practice.The third part,basing on Peter Newmark’s communicative translation theory,analyzes and discusses the translation methods adopted in the process of translation from the lexical and syntactic levels.From the lexical level,the report analyzes the translation strategies of culture-loaded words.From the syntactic level,this paper lists the translation strategies of long and complex sentences.The fourth part summarizes the translation practice and points out the shortcomings of the translation practice and offers suggestions for future study.