| This is a translation report and the source text of the translation project is excerpted from chapters 12 to 15 of the magical-realism novel The Water Dancer by African-American author Ta-Nehisi Coates.Told from the first-person point of view of the protagonist,Hiram,this novel narrates the story of Hiram from his enslavement in a Southern plantation to his escape to the North in order to fight for freedom,and his final determination to fight for the Afro-American freedom in his whole life.This translation project is guided by the Skopos Theory of the German Functional School.According to the three rules of Skopos Theory and some requirements that the target text should meet from the translator’s point of view,the translator adopts translation strategies both at syntactic and lexical level to achieve the communication purpose and fulfill the expected function of the target text.In this translation project,the translator’s purpose is to provide Chinese readers with a Chinese version of this novel so that they can enjoy reading it as the readers of the source text.Therefore,the target text should be firstly aesthetic and appealing to the target readers according to the skopos rule.In order to achieve this,the translator applies four-character structures,idioms to the target text at lexical level,and adopts the strategy of changing the voice and applying litotes at syntactic level,in order to ensure the aesthetic value and readability of the target text.Secondly,to ensure the expression of the target text conformed to the conventions of the target language,and taking the knowledge and cultural background of the target readers into account thus,making sure that the translation has a certain meaning in the context of the target language under the guidance of coherence rule,the translator adopts the strategies of annotation and conversion of word categories at lexical level,and adopts the strategies of reinventing sentence structures and turning phrase into clauses at syntactic level,in this way the target text is comprehensible for the target readers.Finally under the guidance of the fidelity rule,the translator adopts Chinese colloquialisms to translate African American Vernacular English,and adopts the strategy of literal translation at lexical level to translate some rhetoric and place names with implications.At syntactic level,the translator adopts the strategies of following the original syntactic order and imitation,thus retaining the fidelity of the target text to the source text both in content and style to the most degree without violation of the skopos rule and the coherence rule.It is found according to this translation project that Skopos Theory can offer great guidance for the literary translators in terms of which strategies they should adopt and this translation project also offers a paradigm for the translation of Afro-American literature guided by the three rules of Skopos Theory.In addition,the translator also analyses the different methods of translating African American Vernacular English into Chinese referring to the three rules of Skopos Theory and method of applying Chinese colloquialism is proposed by the translator.It is expected that this translation project will contribute to the translation and communication of Afro-American literature in China. |
