A Report On The Translation Of Miss Janie’s Girls(Excerpts)

This is an English-Chinese translation report.The translation material is excerpted from a romantic novel Miss Janie’s Girls by Caroline Brown,an American writer.Taking Miss Janie’s illness as a clue,the novel tells a story that Teresa,Kayla and Noah,after suffering from their own misfortunes,are reunited in Miss Janie’s house.They accompany Miss Janie to spend her last days,while they gradually recover from sufferings and find life goals.The novel consists of twenty-six chapters.The translator selects Chapter 13 to Chapter 16 as the translation material,covering important plots such as the re-planning of the lives of the protagonists and the death of Miss Janie.The author of the novel tells the story based on a real town,and the problems faced by the protagonists in this novel,such as Alzheimer’s disease and the tragic families of origin,are actually a reflection of hot topics in society.The translator hopes that Chinese readers can experience different cultures and understand the author’s thinking on these topics through the translated version.It is necessary to translate the whole story of a popular fiction in a fluent language,and to reflect its language styles and the effect of expression.To this end,the translator uses Newmark’s semantic translation and communicative translation theories as a guide to explore translation issues from three aspects: vocabulary,sentence and rhetoric.When translating vocabulary,the translator,on the basis of mastering the basic meaning of words,uses methods and techniques such as borrowing translation,conversion and extension of word meaning to make the language of the translation standardized and vivid.When it comes to translating sentences,the translator adjusts sentences that do not conform to Chinese expressions through methods and techniques such as division,inversion and free translation due to differences in Chinese and English sentence patterns.In rhetorical translation,the translator uses literal translation as much as possible to retain its original form and effect,but if literal translation is inappropriate,then borrowing translation is applied.After this translation practice,the translator finds that the communicative translation strategy is often used to reproduce the effect of the source language in translating vocabulary and sentences.Moreover,the comprehensive application of semantic translation and communicative translation is preferred to reproduce the beauty of the original language in rhetorical translation on the premise of respecting the original text.In a word,the translation of popular novels should be based on the readers’ acceptance,and the combination of semantic translation and communicative translation theories should be used to bring better reading experience for readers.