A Report On The Translation Of The Nickel Boys (Excerpts)

This paper is an English-Chinese translation practice report and translation materials is excerpted from Colson Whitehead’s novel named The Nickel Boys,which tells the experience of a black boy named Elwood in the Nickel School under the background of apartheid.In this novel,there are a large number of slangs and idioms,Black English vernacular,metaphorical speech and code words.Therefore,the translator should combine the context in the process of translation.From the perspective of Context Theory,the translator discusses the text from three aspects: cultural context,situational context and linguistic context.As for the culture-loaded words and expressions with Black English characteristics,the translator adopts the method of image transformation and adds annotation to make up for the social,historical and cultural differences among countries.In the process of translating the situational dialogues,the translator deeply analyzes the speaker’s emotions,characteristics,intention,time and place to reproduce the deep meaning and emotions of dialogues.Linguistic context is also named Co-text,which focuses on the cohesion and the linear order of sentence structure.In translation,the translator adds cohesive words and adjusts sentence order in target language.At the same time,the translator also hopes that the translation practice report can be helpful to the translation practice in Black literature.