A Report On C-E Translation Of Biography Of General Li Tianyou (Excerpt)

This translation report is based on the excerpt of the sixth chapter of Biography of General Li Tianyou: "In the Years of Anti-Japanese War" : "The oath-taking rally in Yunyang Town","Set Out for the North China Battle-front" and "The First Battle in Pingxing Pass".The translation was carried out under the guidance of Newmark’s communicative translation theory.This practice report expounds on the preparation work before translation,the difficulties encountered in the translation process,solutions,post-translation revision,and translation conclusion.The features of the source text reflect in various culture-loaded words,four-character structures,short sentences,non-subject sentences,and rhetoric devices.To achieve the purpose of translation,the translator uses the following translation skills in the translation process: free translation,literal translation or omission for word translation,subject supplement and subject conversion for sentence translation,the literal translation for rhetorical devices translation.The translator analyzes translation examples from three levels: linguistic level,cross-cultural level,and thinking mode level,discussing how to use this theory to guide biographical text translation and achieve the purpose of the communicative translation.The conclusion is that applying the domestication strategy guided by communicative translation theory is an ideal way to produce an idiomatic translation.It is found that when translating biographies with wartime background,the difficulties lie in numerous dialogues,flexible sentence patterns,military terms,geographical terms,and expressions with wartime characteristics.From the perspective of communicative translation theory,the domestication strategy is effective in conveying the information of source text to target readers.The deficiency of this translation report is that the translation guided by communicative translation theory has a limitation of certain cultural loss,and the study on how to containing cultural elements of the source text on the basis of not affecting the target reader’s reading experience is not in-depth.