From Luojia Hill To San Francisco:the Legendary Life Of Twin Sisters Struggling In China And The U.S.(Excerpt) From Chinese To English Translation Practice Report

This translation practice is based on an excerpt from the Chinese documentary novel From Luojia Hill to San Francisco: The Legendary Live of Twin Sisters Struggling in China and the United States,published by Wuhan University in 2010.The novel was written by Hu Zhi and Hu Hui,famous Chinese entrepreneurs who had studied in the U.S.and returned to construct their hometown afterwards.The novel is documentary literature,focusing on the main characters’ life experiences in China and the U.S.It has certain literary significance and historical value because it possesses a literary depth and reflects the background of China from the war to the founding of the new country,witnessing the development of China over the past decade and the growth of young Chinese people in that era.The novel also records the deeds of overseas scholars and businessmen,represented by Hu Zhi and Hu Hui,who joined the construction of the motherland at a time when China’s economy was still in ruins,and is a tribute to the selfless overseas returnees of that time.In addition,the cultural differences between China and the United States are also evident in this book,and thus have values for cultural studies.The translation of a documentary novel is challenging because it requires the translator to faithfully respond to the socio-historical background,as well as to express the complex emotions of the characters and convey the literary and abstract meanings therein.This report adopts Chesterman’s translation norm theory to help solve these challenges,which holds that a good translation needs to meet both the reader’s expectation and the translator’s own professional requirements.Under the specific guidelines,Chesterman proposes the operational methods to achieve the above norms,namely,translation strategies at three levels: syntactic,semantic and pragmatic,which are expressed in detail and of high practical value.In the translation process,translators use the above theories to solve some translation difficulties.At the cultural level,cultural filtering can effectively solve the problem of cultural default.At the sentence structure level,cohesion change can solve the problem of incomplete and non-fluent expression.At the semantic level,abstract change and emphasis change can solve the problem of unidiomatic and incomprehensible translations.By flexibly applying the translation strategies proposed by Chesterman,the translator systematically improves the translation from syntactic,semantic and pragmatic levels,and enables the translation to achieve the expectancy norm and professional norm as much as possible,so that the translation quality can be effectively improved.