An English-Chinese Translation Report On The Four Winds (Chapter 1-5)

The original text of this translation practice is excerpted from the first five chapters of an American bestselling novel The Four Winds,written by a famous American writer Kristin Hannah.The book tells a story about a woman fighting against the hard life and the era under the background of the Great Depression,aiming to praise the braveness,strength,and independent spirit of women.After making an analysis about The Four Winds from the linguist level and the aesthetic level,the author finds that the words of this book are concise and diverse,most of the sentences are short,and the whole structure is clear with time as an order;the author uses a lot of literature rhetoric,which contributes to the beautiful and fluent language and slow narrative rhythm that cater to the expectations of women readers.Given these facts,The Four Winds is an excellent literary work that is worth pondering.So this report chooses George Steiner’s Hermeneutic as a theoretical guidance,and shows the application of Steiner’s four moves of translation(trust,aggression,incorporation and compensation)in guiding the English to Chinese translation of The Four Winds from the lexical level,the sentence level and the textual level.However,the translator’s emphasizes are different in these three levels.In terms of the lexical level,including the translation of the adjective words and culture-loaded words,focus is given on the moves,“trust” and “compensation”;while in terms of the sentence level,like “overtones” and “dialogues”,focus is given on the move,“aggression”.In the textual level,focus is given on the moves like “aggression” and“ incorporation”.Moreover,an overall understanding of the novel is necessary in the translation process,including the narrative rhythm,the style and the femininity.These aspects should be reflected in the translation version in order to meet the aesthetic expectation of the target readers.This report aims to show some difficult and key points in the translation process of the The Four Winds under the guidance of Steiner’s Hermeneutic and four moves of translation.And hope this translation report would provide a reference for the understanding and translation of the femininity in women fiction and other literary works.