A Report On The Chinese Translation Of How Beautiful We Were (Section 1 Of Chapter One)

How Beautiful We Were is a fictional novel written by the African-American writer Imbolo Mbue,and was published by Canongate Books in August 2020.Set in the fictional 1980 African village of Kosawa,the novel tells the story of the villagers bravely confronting the foreign capital forces who come to exploit oil.The source text is excerpted from the section 1 of chapter one of the novel,with a total of about14,000 English words.The source text belongs to the fictional literary text with the following language characteristics.In terms of vocabulary,the source text is relatively simple and easy to understand,there are many polysemous words,and some English idioms and slang are also used.At the sentence level,the source text is narrated in the first person,with the subjective color of the narrator.In addition,there are many dialogue descriptions.Therefore,the translation should grasp the character’s psychological state,speaking mood and tone.Based on the above characteristics,the translator used the context theory to guide the translation.Context refers to the specific environment in which language is used.All language communication takes place in a certain context.Context plays a significant role in understanding the language meaning,and it is equally important for translation activities that play the function of language conversion.Based on Halliday’s context theory,this report makes a case study of translation from linguistic context,situational context and cultural context.Firstly,through the analysis of linguistic context,the translator dealt with lexical and syntactic level translation problems by semantic option,conversion of part of speech,amplification,omission and restruction.Secondly,by analyzing the situational context and grasping the field,tenor and mode well,the translator could select the appropriate target language to accurately convey the connotation and language style of the source text.Thirdly,by analyzing cultural context,the translator could reduce the linguistic and cultural differences between English and Chinese through the use of four-character phrases and Chinese idioms.Based on the above research,the translator believes that the context theory plays a great guiding role in the translation of this novel.It hopes that this translation report can provide some reference value for the application of context theory in literary translation practice.