A Report On The E-C Translation Of The Prodigal Tongue (Excerpts)

This report takes an excerpt from a book as the source text,named The Prodigal Tongue: The Love-Hate Relationship Between American and British English.In this book the author presents a series of comparisons and contrasts between American English and British English,which makes it a wonderful linguistic book.According to the text typology of Katharina Reiss,this text is classified as informative text.As for the theoretical framework,the Skopos Theory by Hands J.Vermeer is chosen as a guiding theory for this report.After an overall analysis of textual features,it is decided to take abstract noun phrases as the research subject for two reasons.First lies in the large number of abstract noun phrases in the text;second is that they embody abstract meaning and pose difficulties for Chinese readers to understand and for the translator to find appropriate counterparts in Chinese.Quantitative analysis is adopted in the report.It's found that 133 abstract noun phrases are used in the excerpts and sorted into four types: V+N,N+N,P+N,A+N.In translating the above four types of abstract noun phrases,six strategies are used including addition,conversion,omission,specification,repetition and inversion.Addition and conversion are the most frequently-used ones.Addition is mainly used to fill semantic gaps and fulfill translation purpose.Conversion,specification and inversion are used mainly due to differences between Chinese and English.Omission is effective in improving the conciseness of the translation,while it is often accompanied with addition,which unfolds implications of abstract nouns.Repetition plays an important role in reducing ambiguity and improving readability.During the translation process,the three rules ofthe Skopos Theory keep guiding the way.Therefore under the direction of the Skopos Theory and with the application of the six translation strategies,the readability,accuracy and fluency of the translation are relatively well assured.By means of detailed analysis,this report aims to bring some inspiration for the translation of abstract noun phrases in the texts of the same type.