A Report On The Translation Of Welcome Home（Part Ⅰ）

This paper is a translation practice report based on the English-Chinese translation practice of Welcome Home:A Memoir with Selected Photographs and Letters（Part I）by a contemporary American writer,Lucia Berlin.I am responsible for the translation of the memoir part of the book,that is,the first part.Up to now,there hasn’t been any Chinese version for the book.In the translation process,Eugene Nida’s theory of functional equivalence is used as a guiding theory for the translation practice.The translation report aims at memoir translation,especially the application of translation strategies and techniques in translating memoir texts under the guidance of functional equivalence theory.The report mainly deals with the translation of the memoir section of the book,which mainly covers Berlin’s experience from her childhood,and student days to the earlier period of her married life.A memoir is a narrative written from the perspective of the author about an important part of his or her life.It has both literary and aesthetic value.Welcome Home,focusing on the places the author calls "homes",makes use of quite a lot of metaphors,onomatopoeic words,a lot of character,scenery and psychological descriptions.The challenge for the translator is how to convey her vivid writing to Chinese readers effectively and achieve equivalence in meaning,style,and reading experience.The translation report consists of five chapters.Chapter One is a description of the task,including the source and language features of the translation task.Chapter Two describes the translation process,including pre-translation,during-translation,and proofreading and modification.Chapter Three is the brief introduction to Functional Equivalence Theory,mainly including the overview and application of the Functional Equivalence Theory.Chapter Four is the case study,which mainly includes four sections.The first section is the analysis at the lexical level,adopting amplification,omission and annotation,and also introduces the diction for onomatopoeia.The second section is the analysis at the syntactic level,mainly adopting division,combination,and voice conversion.The third section is the analysis at the textual level,discussing how to achieve functional equivalence in cohesion and coherence.The fourth section mainly introduces stylistic equivalence,which mainly includes the figures of speech,namely simile,personification and parallelism and the representation of rhythm.Chapter Five is the conclusion,pointing out the gains and limitations of the practice and the translation practice report,as well as the improvements to be made in the future.