An E-C Translation Report On Winter Garden (Chapters 1-4)

This is an English-Chinese translation report on the book Winter Garden,a novel written by American writer Christine Hanna.The story describes the lives of sistersMeredith and Nina Whitson and their parents.At first,the sisters do not have a good relationship with their mother,and the only link between them is the Russian fairy tales that their mother tells when they are young.Finally,through a fairy tale that their mother promises their father to tell before he dies,the relationship between mother and daughters has been alleviated.Based on the translation of chapters 1 to 4,this report tells the story of the sisters’ separate lives before their father falls ill.Furthermore,the purpose of translating stories is to bring warmth to people who are stressed by life and work.The translation report firstly analyzes the text type and linguistic features of Winter Garden,then discusses translation difficulties from three aspects: lexicon,syntax and rhetoric,including the proper noun,part of speech,word meaning,parenthesis,attributive clause,and personification,as well as simile.Besides,in order to solve these difficulties encountered in translation,the corresponding translation methods are adopted accordingly:(1)With many proper nouns with brand or characteristic culture appearing in the source text,annotation is applied to solve;(2)The nouns are widely used in English while verbs are used in Chinese,so the method of conversion of part of speech is adopted to make the translation smooth and easy to read;(3)When all meanings of a word are not suitable for the context,using the method of extension of word-meaning is unavoidable on the basis of its original meaning;(4)Many implied meanings are not expressed in the source text.At this time,the method of amplification is used to show the real intention in source text;(5)According to the types and functions of parenthesis,the parenthesis is translated by being put in round brackets and preposed to make the translation consistent with the Chinese expression;(6)Based on the unique sentence structure of attributive clause,the combination and division translation method are selected;(7)With regard to the simile and personification,metaphrase and substitution methods are selected to make the target language vivid.Finally,the report gives a summary of the translation practice.The translator has gained a lot of experience from translation,which provides reference for the translation of similar texts in the future,and has a further understanding of Russian and American culture.Besides,it reflects on the limitations in translation practice and proposes suggestions for future improvement to have a better practice translation in the future.