A Report On The Translation Of Making Anew My Home: A Memoir (Excerpts)

This report is based on the about 40,000-word translation practice of the first three chapters of Mathew Zachariah’s book--Making Anew My Home : A Memoir.The author of the book mainly narrates in this memoir his personal experience as he moving around principally in India,the United States and Canada as an immigrant first and migrant later.The two most important questions that run through the writer’s narrative are: What is his core identity after so many changes? What is his national or cultural identity? Where does he truly belong? The language used within the source text is comparatively plain and understandable with few long and difficult sentences,and the writer depicts different local customs,religious traditions many times in this book.In the 1980 s,the famous Israeli scholar Gideon Toury proposed the theory of translational norms.In Toury’s point of view,translation is a process of making decisions.This whole process is oriented by the target language and is influenced by various social and cultural factors.He saw such factors,or constraints,as norms and further divides those norms into three types: the preliminary norms,the initial norms and the operational norms.Those norms,with respective roles,play important parts in the decision-making process of a translator either in macro-level or micro-level.Based on the analysis of the memoir in its features,the author believes that ensuring authenticity of the source text can be regarded as a norm in memoir translation.Hence,the author carefully analyzed her translation from the two aspects of initial norms and operational norms so as to explore the influence of authenticity norm on the formation of her translation.This report includes 4 parts.Through this translation practice,the author attempts to exhibit the original style of the source textand present an authentic Mathew Zachariah for readers.Besides,through the discussion of the translation strategies and skills of such difficulties as proper nouns,sentences with different structures under the guidance of Toury’s translation norms,it is hoped that this translation practice can provide a practical paradigm for memoir translation.