A Report On The E-C Translation Of Frederick Douglass:Prophet Of Freedom(Excerpts)under The Guidance Of Text Typology

This is a report on the E-C translation of Frederick Douglass:the prophet of freedom written by David·William·Blight,a professor of American history at Yale University.This practice report mainly studies two questions:first,what are the stylistic features of the original text?Second,how does the text typology guide the translation of this type of text?The translation material of this paper is a personage's biography.It is found that its greatest features are authenticity and literariness.The text typology was initially proposed by Reiss,a representative of German functionalism school.She divides texts into three types,namely informative text,expressive text and operative text based on their functions and claims that the type of text determines the corresponding translation method.The translation material of this report falls into the category of compound text.It is informative as well as expressive.Therefore,the translator should first synthesize the translation strategies of the two texts.The content-focused text is classified as target-language oriented by Reiss.Its translation should conform to the reading habits of the target language readers and convey the content of the original clearly and accurately.When the text focuses on expression,it falls into the category of source-language oriented text.Its translation should reproduce the esthetic value of original text by retaining figurative manners of speaking,metaphors or creating new ones.Under the guidance of text typology,the translator uses translation techniques such as annotation,addition,restructuring to solve the problems encountered in the process of translation,striving to achieve the equivalence of informative function with the original text.As for the translation of expressive text,the translator uses literal translation to retain the rhetorical effect of the original text.In addition,in order to improve the overall language effect of the translation,the translator uses the four-character structure to give the translation a sense of rhyme.