Report On The Translation Of La Galanterie From The Perspective Of Functional Translation

La galanterie is an article selected from Realms of Memory which was edited by the famous French historian and academic editor Pierre Nora.Composed of 135 papers,Realms of Memory consists of three parts and seven volumes,and has 120 authors.It has won the highest national academic award in France.In the same year,the entry ? lieu de mémoire ? was included in Le Grand Robert de la langue fran?aise.Realms of Memory is a general history of France in the form of memory.It is also a must-read for discussing history and memory issues.The publication of its full translation will undoubtedly have an important impact on the study of French history and memory in China.Different text types call for different translation strategies.La galanterie is a historical text with objective and rigorous language and a certain literariness.Therefore,the translation must not only be faithful to the original text,but also reproduce the original style and spirit.The report is divided into four chapters.The first chapter describes the translation task.It mainly introduces the background of the translation project,the content and type of the task,the author,the purpose and significance of the translation and so on.The project is given by Xue-heng Institute for Advanced Studies of Nanjing University,it was launched to continue to introduce French memory studies,and the full translation is expected to be published by Nanjing University Press in2022.The author of La galanterie is Noémi Hepp who is a French literature teacher at the University of Strasbourg in France.She quotes from a number of sources,talks about the past and the present and describes the unique French social phenomenon-la galanterie fran?aise-from an objective point of view.The second chapter reviews the translation process,including pre-translation preparation,translation process and post-translation matters.The translation work done by the author,such as the collection of text background materials,the formulation of translation plans,and the proofreading work will be presented.The author has three identities while translating: reader and translator of source text,reader of target text.The third chapter analyses the translation cases,including the description of the functional equivalence theory and the characteristics of the source text.The author will summarize the difficulties and problems while translating and try to discuss the translation strategies under the guidance of functional equivalence translation theory.The problems are mainly divided into five categories: quotations,rhetorical devices and idioms,titles,proper names,and dialogues.In terms of quotations translation,the author proposes that the role of quotations in the article is mainly to serve as an argument,support the author’s point of view,and help the author to explain his idea,so the quotations are something useful to the article for the author.Therefore,it’s necessary to combine the original context and grasp the specific needs of the author when translating the quotations.In addition,regarding the polysemy in the quotation,the author proposes to understand the basic meaning of the word,then combine the context to associate and extend the meaning of the word,and finally determine the specific meaning of the word.In terms of rhetorical devices and idioms,on the one hand,the author insists on the unity of content and form,and adopts a literal translation strategy for rhetorical devices.On the other hand,considering the reading reaction of the target readers,the author adopts the free translation to translate the idioms.In terms of the title translation,the author adopts the amplification,so that the title not only accurately reflects the theme of the text,but also catches readers’ attention and enhances readers’ desire to read.In terms of the translation of proper names,the author proposes that under normal circumstances,proper name translation needs to follow the principle of conventions,but when the conventional translation conflicts with the original content to some extent and may cause confusion to the readers,this principle can be disregarded.In terms of dialogue translation,the author proposes that the translation should combine the identity of the speaker,the speaking occasion,the characteristics of the words used by speaker,and the context.The fourth chapter is a summary of translation practice.It aims to review the entire translation process and summarize the gains and deficiencies in translation.The author exposed many problems in translation,not only because of lack of translation experience,but also because of the need to improve his own translation ability.However,this translation practice also allowed the author to accumulate a lot of valuable experience,which gave the author some inspiration for the later translation of other historical texts,and made the author have a deeper understanding and thinking about translation.