A Report On The Translation Of Excerpt Of Homegoing (Chapter 2-5)

The author chooses an excerpt of Homegoing written by African American female writer Yaa Gyasi as the translation text in this practice.As a debut novel,the book has become popular among foreign readers.However,there has been no translated version in China yet,so choosing this novel as the translation text is a meaningful attempt to enrich African literature in China and for Chinese readers to understand African American culture.While translating a novel,it is rather hard to represent the style and content of the original text in another language.Especially Homegoing,a novel abundant with both African and American cultural backgrounds,to reproduce cultural words,emotions and images is even more difficult.Peter Newmark,the famous English translator and translation theorist,put forward communicative translation theory,positing that various means should be employed flexibly to make translation as close as possible to the original text.In accordance with his classification,Homegoing,as a literary work,belongs to the first text type,namely expressive text,which should be dealt with under the guidance of semantic translation.However,considering that literary works translation involves communicative purposes,when description of images,emotions and culture of the original text cannot be reproduced in the translation,more flexible translation strategies need to be adopted to avoid mechanically copying.For this purpose,communicative translation should be employed to render true meaning,which helps to make the translation smoother and more natural,to eliminate obstacles for target readers,and to represent the same effect of the original text on the readers.This report would mainly discuss the handling of communicative factors in literary translation.During the process of translation,the translator would adopt translation strategies such as division,amplification and omission to better reproduce the cultural information,emotions and images of the original text without sacrificing the original meaning.