A Report On Translating The Courage Of Migratory Birds (An Excerpt) Under The Guidance Of Newmark’s Correlative Translation Theory

The source text of this report is excerpted from The Courage of Migratory Birds which was written by the Chinese writer Chi Zijian.Under the guidance of Peter Newmark’s Correlative Translation Theory,the translator translated the last three chapters from this Chinese novel.According to Newmark’s text categorization,The Courage of Migratory Birds is a popular novel.The narrative paragraphs,which occupy an important part of this novel can be categorized into an informative text.The descriptive paragraphs can be categorized into an expressive text.The core definition of this theory is "The more important the language of a text is,the more closely it should be translated." Through this practice,the translator concludes that when we translate narrative paragraphs,in order to achieve maximal and best correlation,we should focus more on free translation by adopting different methods such as paraphrasing and transcribing based on the source text.In order to retain the exotic features of the source text,we should use literal translation plus annotation.When we translate descriptive paragraphs,in order to retain the beauty of form and content as much as possible,we should try to use duplication,replacement when it is necessary rather than only use "Semantic Translation" or "Communicative Translation".Of course,this is not an absolute distinction.This report falls into five major parts:an introduction to the source text and its writer,an introduction to Peter Newmark’s Correlative Translation Theory,the translation process,the case analysis and the conclusion.The case analysis is the essence of this report.In this part,the author summarizes translation methods from two parts:narrative paragraphs and descriptive paragraphs.It is concluded that when translating narrative paragraphs,the translator uses the paraphrasing,transcribing based on the source text and literal translation plus annotation to make the translation more understandable.When translating descriptive paragraphs,the translator tries to use duplication,replacement and free translation.