A Report On The E-C Translation Of The Garden Of Letters(Excerpt)

The Garden Of Letters is a work written by Alison Lichtman,a best-selling contemporary American novelist.It is a literary novel set in World War II,with music as the theme,and mainly discusses the strengths and weaknesses of human nature in the turbulent war years.The novel combines elements of modernism and realism,using a non-linear narrative sequence and stream-of-consciousness techniques,showing a high level of artistry.This translation project is the E-C Translation of The Garden Of Letters(Excerpt).The translation of this work can not only enable Chinese readers to have a better understanding of music-themed novels,but also explore the stories of that era,so that contemporary people can cherish the peaceful life of today.This translation practice report introduces the translation tasks,analyzes the text types and linguistic features of the novel,briefs the Adaptation Theory,and discusses the guiding role of Adaptation Theory in literary novel translation.From the four perspectives of Adaptation Theory,namely,contextual correlates of adaptability,structural objects of adaptability,dynamics of adaptability and salience of the adaptability,the translator discusses and analyzes the problems in translation.In addition,the translator adopts the translation strategy of “domestication as the main part and foreignization as the auxiliary part”,and employs translation methods such as literal translation,free translation,amplification,omission and so on to make the translation conform to the grammatical structure and expression habits of Chinese on the basis of being faithful to the original text,and show the guiding significance of adaptation theory in translation practice.Under the guidance of Adaptation Theory,the translator hopes to convey the thoughts and expression intention of the original author to the target language readers,so as to achieve similar reading effect to the source language readers.The translator also hopes to enrich the translation study of musical novels on the basis of previous studies,and provide some references for the translation study of literary novels in the future.