A Report On E-C Translation Of Narrative Form (Excerpt) From The Perspective Of Text Typology Theory

The material chosen for the translation practice report,Narrative Form,is written by Suzanne Keen,an American scholar,and it is a professional theory book about narratology.The book discusses narrative form and basic concepts of narratology from the perspective of critics and creators of narrative and provides a variety of critical terms and strategies used for the analysis of formal qualities of fiction,which can help readers to understand narrative form and techniques of fiction better.The translator has selected chapter 5 to chapter 7 of Narrative Form for E-C translation practice.The source text has the following characteristics.First,there are lots of technical terms about narratology and literature in original text and nominalization is extremely obvious.Second,sentences are complicated.Complex sentences containing clauses and passive voice are employed frequently.Third,the elaboration of the literary theory is logically rigorous.According to the characteristics of source text,the translator uses Reiss’ s text typology theory as guidance and explores translation strategies and methods of informative texts in three aspects,namely lexical level,syntactic level and textual level.At lexical level,the translator employs strategies of conversion,ellipsis and footnote and adopts established and conventional translation for related technical terms.At syntactic level,some translation methods,including voice conversion,word order adjustment and sentence splitting,are employed to ensure that translation conforms to the expression habits of Chinese and conveys information better.At textual level,the translator employs strategies of pronoun concretization and amplification and focuses on the accurate translation of connectives to make translation fluent,coherent and logical.Through the translation practice,the translator summarizes translation strategies and methods of informative texts and hopes to provide some experience of theory application for translation of informative texts.