A Report On The E-C Translation Of Tropic Of Orange(excerpt)

Under the background of globalization,economic and cultural exchanges between countries have greatly increased.The translation of excellent literary works plays an important role in promoting cultural communication,and the quality of translation directly affects the acceptability of works.Tropic of Orange is a realistic novel written by a Japanese-American writer Karen Yamashita.It describes the life conditions of seven immigrants with different skin colors,races,and occupations from different nations in America,and praises their excellent personalities and contributions to the prosperity and development of American society.In recent years,Asian American literature has gradually found its place and become the research focus of scholars in academic fields,and has also received enthusiastic attention from the masses.Under this context,the author chooses this novel for translation practice and aims to provide a reliable translation to help non-English learners know more about life conditions of the minority immigrates in America.Therefore,it is of great social significance.The report selects an excerpt from Chapter Three to Chapter Seven of Tropic of Orange as its translation material,guided under context theory,combined with features of this novel,gives a systematic analysis of translation methods in the translation cases.Context theory originates from the discipline of linguistics,mainly includes the linguistic context,situational context,and cultural context,among which cultural context is the most important one.When the theoryis applied to the translation of the novel,it is necessary to take account of specific contexts of the original text and to reconstruct cultural context in the target text,in order to achieve semantic and stylistic approximation.At first,this report introduces the contents of Tropic of Orange,and analyzes stylistic and linguistic characteristics of the text.Then,context theory and its applicability to the translation of the novel are introduced.Next,the author describes the task process which includes pre-task preparation,translation process,revision and reflection.Finally,based on context theory,the author discusses translation methods used in this translation practice from perspectives of the translation of culture-loaded words such as proper nouns,idioms and slang,and the translation of sentences with rhetorical devices.In terms of proper nouns,the author adopts translation methods such as transliteration,literal translation,and literal translation with annotation to preserve semantic meaning of the original text as much as possible.In terms of idioms and slang,the author uses free translation and substitution to make the translation easy to understand and acceptable.In the case of sentences with rhetorical devices,translation methods such as amplification,repetition and concretization,adjustment of word order are used to achieve structural and semantic equivalence and to enhance the readability.This translation practice shows that,in the process of translating the novel Tropic of Orange,translation methods guided by context theory can achieve the expected effect.