Translation Practice Report On Dear John (Chapter 4)

It is said that “reading history makes one wise” and “careful analysis of the past makes one can speculate the future”.History,as a cultural carrier for the ideological education,is of self-evident importance.Therefore,the translator determined to translate a historical text.Dear John-American Love and Loyalty in Wartime is a historical and literary work.The author of the book aims to introduce the readers to the rough love stories in the military camp during the war,and then to attract the attention of all walks of life to the emotional world of soldiers.The part of the book the translator selected to translate is the fourth chapter.Firstly,the translator analyzed the linguistic characteristics of the original text.In terms of vocabulary,culture-loaded words and nominalized structures are widely used.Syntactically,inanimate subject structures,attributive clauses and passive sentences are used more often.In terms of language style,there are many colloquial expressions and slang terms in the text.Based on these characteristics,the translator chose Skopos theory as the guiding theory of translation practice.Then,by using the methods of documentation and case study,under the guidance of the three principles of Skopos theory,the skopos rule,the fidelity rule and coherence rule,this paper analyzes the translation methods and strategies from three aspects of vocabulary,syntactic structure and language style.In translation,the methods of literal and liberal translation with annotation,sentence structure and voice conversions,are used to make the translation not only faithful to the original text but also coherent within and between languages,and at the same time meet the expectations of the target readers to achieve finally the purpose of communication.Through this translation practice,the translator has verified the feasibility of the three principles of Skopos theory to guide the translation practice of historical texts,and the possibility of reproducing the language style and features of the original text and achieving the communicative purpose under the guidance of Skopos theory.It is also concluded that the autonomy of the translator and the purpose of translation are decisive to the degree of fidelity of the translation to the original text.The translator hopes that this translation practice report can provide reference for the future translation of such texts.