| This report is based on a simulated E-C translation task of translating the documentary text: Islands of Abandonment: Life in the Post-Human Landscape written by the British writer Cal Flyn.A large number of abstract nouns are ingeniously employed in this text by giving full play to the characteristics of the English language.Abstract nouns in this text are not only general in meaning,but also complicated in usage.Translation barriers often occur when translating abstract nouns due to language differences,and “translationese” that does not conform to Chinese habits is prone to be produced.Therefore,translating abstract nouns is the main difficulty faced by the translator.According to the classification of abstract nouns by Zhang Jin and Liu Guangyao,this report divides the translation difficulties into following aspects: 1)translating abstract nouns of action;2)translating abstract nouns of quality;3)translating inherent abstract noun.Nida’s Functional Equivalence Theory emphasizes the reproduction of the message rather than the form of the language.This theory could be helpful to overcome translation barriers caused by language differences,so that it is feasible to use it as the guiding theory of this report.Under the guidance of Functional Equivalence Theory,the following translation tactics are applied to solve translation difficulties: 1)for abstract nouns of action,conversion of part of speech and specification are adopted;2)for abstract nouns of quality,conversion of part of speech and figuration are adopted;3)for inherent abstract nouns,specification,and figuration are adopted.The practice shows that the above tactics can effectively solve the difficulties in translating abstract nouns in this report.It is hoped that this report can enrich the research of the translation of abstract nouns and provide some references to the translation practice of other similar texts. |
