A Report On The Translation Of Miss Janie’s Girls (Chapter One And Chapter Two)

This thesis is a report on the English-Chinese translation of the excerpts from the novel Miss Janie’s Girls written by American writer Carolyn Brown.This novel mainly tells that Miss Janie,after knowing that her days were numbered as a result of both cancer and Alzheimer’s,asked her great-nephew Noah to bring back two foster daughters who had been separated from her for more than ten years,Noah did as she wanted and all of them accompanied Miss Janie through her last days.The whole story shows the value and significance of family affection,and possesses the concept of humanitarianism.Miss Janie’s Girls is readable as a popular novel.The translator chooses the first two chapters of this novel as the source text.Due to the differences between Chinese and English,word-for-word translation may sometimes lead to misunderstanding.Necessary translation strategies shall be adopted to make the target text easier for Chinese readers to understand.Since the source text is a literary work,it is equally important to retain the beauty of the original.Therefore,the difficulty of this translation practice lies in how to accurately convey both information and language style of the original text without “translationese”,so as to make the translation more natural and easier for target language readers to accept.In consideration of the style and language characteristics of the original,the translator adopts translation methods such as extension,conversion of voice and parts of speech,amplification and omission.With Eugene A.Nida’s functional equivalence as the guiding theory,the translation practice is analyzed from the three aspects of vocabulary,sentence and rhetoric.Through the translation practice,the translator develops a better understanding of functional equivalence.In addition to being faithful to the original text and precisely conveying the author’s intention,literary translation also requires the translator to provide target language readers with the same reading experience as that of the source language readers,by maintaining the style of the original text and reproducing characters’ personality and inner world.The translator is supposed to master the two languages and to have a good knowledge of the cultural background of both sides,so as to have a deeper understanding of the original text and to produce a satisfactory translation work.