| This translation practice report is based on the Chinese-English translation of The Paper Hawk(excerpt).The original text is a full-length novel written by Ge Liang,a Chinese writer,to commemorate his grandfather.It tells the history of the ups and downs that happened between two big families during the period of Republican China.The translator has excerpted the first and second chapters as the translation practice,which mainly tells the story of the hostess of the Lu’s family who found the abandoned baby Ge er and brought him back to the Lu family during the turbulent period,which caused great controversy and a series of events in the Lu family.The text is literary,and also a documentary for it is drawn from real events.The text is full of folk languages such as four-letter words,proper nouns,or proverbs;in addition,it contains a lot of descriptive language.All of these make it difficult for English readers to read and understand.After the analysis of the characteristics of the source text,the translator decided to adopt the Skopos Theory to guide the translation practice.This theory is reader-centered and focuses on the reader’s reading experience.It suggests that the translator choose different translation strategy and method while translating the original text according to the different purposes of the author and the translator.Under the guidance of the Skopos Theory,the translator conducts case analysis on the translation difficulties in The Paper Hawk at the lexical,syntactical and discoursal levels,so as to summarize the translation strategies and methods adopted by the translator.At the lexical level,the translator adopts free translation,modification,amplification and footnote to translate proper nouns,so that readers can remove the reading barrier;at the syntactical level,the translator adopts literal translation,free translation and footnote to translate proverbs and run-on sentences,so that the translation is more in conformity with the readers’ reading habits;at the discoursal level,reference,ellipsis and collocation are used to achieve cohesion and coherence.Through this translation practice,the translator finds that the Skopos Theory can guide the translation of literary texts,with a view to providing some reference for future translations of texts of this type. |
