A Practice Report On The Translation Of An Excerpt From An American Novel On The Come Up

This is a practice report on the English-Chinese translation of Chapter 1 to Charpter5 of the novel On the Come Up by Angie Thomas,an African-American novelist.The novel is celebrated as one of the most influential contemporary literary works and an ode to hip hop music as well.The novel is rich in colloquial expressions and description of emotions,which reflects the features of African-American hip hop music and their social life as well.Given the complexity embedded in literary works,the author takes the approach of Peter Newmark’s communicative translation theory when conducting her translation.The communicative translation theory requires the translator to fully understand the original text according to the context and accurately convey the information in the source text.The communicative translation can help the translator effectively decode African-American rap lyrics on the basis of slang terms,black English,the cultural background and rhetorical devices,hence making the novel more accessible to its Chinese readers.During this translation practice,the author believes that communicative translation theory is applicable to the translation of expressive texts,which can inspire the English-Chinese translation of African-American rap lyrics.It is hoped that this report will have some useful implications for the future application of communicative translation theory to the translation practice of black English and African-American rap lyrics.