Analysis On The Translator’s Notes As A Means Of Translation Compensation

This report is based on the translation of a work on the history of French literature entitled Le roman modes d’emploi which the author co-translated during the period of postgraduate studies.The book is a representative work of Henri Godard,a famous contemporary French literary critic,in which Godard explores the characteristics and development process of anti-mimetic novels in the 20 th century.It is a literary history with a unique perspective and of great significance for a deep understanding of French literature in the 20 th century.When discussing the characteristics of French novels in different periods in the 20 th century,Henri Godard quoted a large number of works and conducted in-depth analysis of them.Therefore,his works are very academic involving a large number of theories and terminology in the field of literary criticism.How to compensate for these contents has become a problem that the author has to think about.During the process of translation practice,the author tried to provide readers with compensating information by adding translator’s notes.However,the author has encountered difficulties in how to deal with the translator’s notes,which is mainly manifested in their forms and contents.This report is divided into four chapters:The first chapter serves as an introduction to the translation project in which the author gives a more detailed description of the source of the text,the original author of the work,the content and the style of the text.The second chapter reviews the entire translation process,including three aspects:pre-translation preparation,the translation process and post-translation issues.The third chapter is a specific analysis based on translation examples,which forms the main part of the report.The author first did a systematic research on the theory of translation compensation of domestic and foreign researchers and examined the translator’s note as an important “compensation” method.Based on earlier classifications of translation compensation,the author,guided by Ma Hongjun’s theories on the two main compensation methods: explicit compensation and implicit compensation,concluded that literary history texts can achieve compensation effects through two main forms: external annotations and internal annotations.Then,the author relies on the six translation compensation principles proposed by Mr.Xia Tingde:demand principle,associated principle,equivalent function principle,key principle,principle of consistency and principle of proximity,and analyzes the content of the notes from translators in translation practice.Finally,the fourth chapter provides a summary of translation practice.The author systematically summarizes this translation practice and its theoretical thinking,highlighting the gains and shortcomings in order to provide a reference for the strategies of the translator’s notes in later literary history texts.