A Report On The Translation Of The Last Black Unicorn(Excerpts) On The Basis Of Relevance Translation Theory

This is an E-C translation report on the translation of Tiffany Haddish's best-seller The Last Black Unicorn.Tiffany Haddish is a famous black comedian and author in America who suffered a lot in her early life.But to live better,she forced herself to be humorous and positive.The source text The Last Black Unicorn is a memoir of the author on the basis of her own experiences.It describes the author's experiences in high school,marriage,and career as a comedian with humor and satire style in an oral way.In the book,she took herself as an example to make a crack that there were some problems in the society,such as school bullying,racism and sexism.The source text is an expressive text as well as vocative text,whose language is colloquial and life oriented with humor and satire style.This report chooses the first three chapters as the source text.These chapters are about the author's life in high school,Laugh Factory Comedy Camp,and her foster care and family,which laid a basis for her career as a comedian.The Relevance Translation Theory is taken as the guidance in this translation project.According to this theory,translation is a process about inference.The purpose is to ensure that the target readers could get similar contextual effect in the translated text as the source-text readers in the source text.Therefore,the translated text should be faithful to the relevance between the source text and its cognitive environment.According to the literature,three types of humor and satire are identified in the present report: general humor and satire,language-based humor and satire,and culture-loaded humor and satire.The language-based humor and satire is further divided into language-expressed humor and satire and language-created humor and satire.The present translation report summarizes the main translation methods and techniques in different humor and satire: in the translation of general humor and satire,literal translation is taken as a main method and keeping the similar relevance between the source text and the contextual assumption in the translated text is emphasized;in the translation of language-based humor and satire,the target readers' processing effort should be considered,and free translation is taken as the main method;and in the translation of culture-loaded humor and satire,explanation,annotation,and amplification are used as main techniques to supplement the cognitive environment.There are five chapters in this translation report.Chapter One covers the background,introducing the source text and its author,purpose and significance of the present report,and the framework of this translation report as well.Chapter Two expounds the translation preparation,translation process and proofreading.Chapter Three introduces the Relevance Theory that guides the translation practice in this report.Chapter Four is the case analysis,which mainly analyzes the appliance of the Relevance Translation Theory in the present translation project.The last chapter is a conclusion,summarizing the gains and imperfections in the translation practice.