On The Translation Of Popular English Novels Under The Guidance Of Communicative Translation Theory

The translation material for this report is selected from the first four chapters of the popular English novel Manhattan Beach by Jennifer Egan.The novel unfolds a story centering on how the heroine Anna Kerrigan,together with her families,survived in Brooklyn after the Great Depression(1929-1933).Jennifer Egan,a prominent American writer,wins the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award for her masterpiece A Visit from the Goon Squad.The translation report explores difficulties and strategies in the translation of the popular English novel in combination with communicative translation theory.The theory gives priority to the response and expectation of target text(TT)readers and underlines the achievement of communicative effect so that it can produce on TT readers an effect as close as possible to that obtained on source text(ST)readers.The original text is a typical popular English novel aimed at whetting strong interest of the general public,which requires the translator to be TT readers-oriented to communicate ST message in TT in an effective way.As such,communicative translation theory can be applicable to the translation of the popular English novel.In the translation report,the translator compares and analyzes the original version with the modified version through typical examples,and adopts corresponding translation strategies in addressing difficulties including proper nouns and colloquial words at lexical level and short sentences and loose sentences at syntactic level.Firstly,at lexical level,the translator adopts transliteration,annotation and established popular translated names to translate proper nouns.Colloquial words are translated through following the original tone and adopting semantic extension.Secondly,at syntactic level,the translator adopts combination and addition to translate short sentences.And loose sentences are translated through following the original sentence order and reconstructing the sentence structure.To conclude,the communicative translation theory can play a guiding role in translating the popular English novel,and in terms of different difficult points,the translator needs to adopt corresponding translation strategies to tackle them.In this connection,based on the communicative translation theory and various translation strategies above,the translation can be more readable for TT readers who can get effective messages in the same way as ST readers do,and eventually the best communicative effect can be obtained.