A Report On E-C Translation Of The Laws Of Human Nature(Excerpts)

Self-help books focus on people’s work,life,psychology,emotion and other aspects,encouraging readers to pursue a better life.The development of self-help books abroad started earlier,and there is a vast market in China.Therefore,the translation of such books can not only enrich China’s book market,fill the gap in the domestic market,but also provide spiritual food for domestic readers and enrich their psychological knowledge,which is of self-evident importance.Newmark’s Communicative Translation theory puts the target readers first and gives priority to their understanding and needs,making the target text produce the same effect as the original texts.The strategy of Communicative Translation requires the target language to be smooth and easy to understand,standardized and natural,ensuring the same effect as the source language to convey the original idea.Communicative Translation theory can be used as a theoretical guide in translating self-help texts.The Laws of Human Nature is an American contemporary psychological self-help book,in which in the third chapter non-verbal communication strategies are discussed through the description of specific cases.Based on Newmark’s Communicative Translation theory,this report takes the translation of the third chapter as the research subject.Firstly,it describes the process of pre-translation,in-translation and post-translation.Then the cases of examples in translating are analyzed based on Communicative Translation,in terms of lexical,syntactic and textual levels.The translation strategies of self-help texts are focused on: 1.In the lexical level,the conversion of parts of speech,the extension of word meaning and four-character structure should be adopted according to the difference between English and Chinese,as well as specific context,so as to make the feelings of target readers first;2.In the syntactic level,owing to the characteristics of hypotaxis and parataxis in English and Chinese,the skills of addition,division and reconstruction should be used to deal with some long and complex sentences;3.In the textual level,grammatical cohesion can be achieved by reference,conjunction and parallelism,and lexical cohesion can be achieved by using the characteristics of words repetition in Chinese,so the meaning and artistic conception can be restored to Chinese readers as far as possible.Based on the technical preparation before translation,the analysis of the target text in translation and the discussion of case analysis of post-translation,the following conclusions are drawn:1.The characteristics of self-help texts make it feasible to use Communicative Translation theory as the theoretical guide to improve the quality of the target text and make the target readers have the same reading experience as the original readers;2.Preparation work before translation is important,including parallel text reading,glossary building,selection of CAT tools and so on;3.In order to achieve the ultimate goal of communicative translation,post-translation proofreading should be carried out jointly by the translator and the representatives of target readers.In addition,the translation of self-help texts requires the translator to have a solid mother tongue ability,comprehensive cultural knowledge and a high level of information technology-assisted translation.