A Report On Chinese Translation Of The World’s Fastest Man (Excerpts)

Under the background of economic and cultural globalization,the spread of biographical literature has gradually expanded,and a large number of biographical translations have appeared,which causes a discussion on the translation of this type of text.The material of this translation task belongs to biographical literature,which is selected from the Prologue and Part One(Chapter 1-3)of The World’s Fastest Man:The Extraordinary Life of Cyclist Major Taylor,America’s First Black Sports Hero,written by the American author Michael Kranish,with a total of 12,453 words.By describing numerous historical facts and real cases,this book introduces the whole life of the cyclist Taylor in terms of growth,development,achievement and influence with simple,natural and vivid expressions.Communicative translation theory,put forward by Peter Newmark,emphasizes free translation and idiomatic translation under the influence of domestication,and the expression is flexible enough to help the target readers understand the original text in order to achieve a communicative effect.This report summarizes two characteristics of biographical literature under the guidance of communicative translation theory,one is historical,and the other is literary.On this basis,the report also analyzes difficulties encountered in the translation of this text from lexical,syntactic and textual level,and puts forward several corresponding translation strategies and skills.At the lexical level,due to the differences between Chinese and English expression habits,this report resorts to some translation methods such as conversion and four-characterexpressions to make the translation more in line with the habitual expression and aesthetic standards for Chinese readers,and to make the translation version more fluent,authentic and acceptable to the target readers.At the syntactic level,there are many clauses in the source text,while run-on sentences are frequently used in Chinese,so it is necessary to split and adjust the word order so that the translation logic is clear and the expression is accurate.At the textual level,domestication is advocated in this report to keep the writing style of original text as natural and realistic as possible,meanwhile,free translation is also used flexibly so that the translation version can be understood and accepted easier by the target readers.In this paper,the translator puts forward some corresponding translation strategies for the difficulties encountered in the translation process of biographical texts,that is,taking the target language readers as the center,and using translation skills such as combination,division,conversion and inversion.Through this translation practice,the translator hopes to provide several references for the translation of biographical literature.