Analysis Of Great Writers Barbara Kingsolver Based On Translation Compensation Theory

Barbara Kingsolver,as a distinguished writer in contemporary American,has wide-ranging knowledge and life experience,which renders her great interest in cultural differences and themes about society and political history.She tries hard to reflect these themes in her works.The biography Great Writers: Barbara Kingsolver emphasizes her growing experience and illustrates related thoughts about her three master works.This report takes the biography(excerpts)as the source text.Based on the semantic losses at linguistic level of biographical texts,the report puts forward the corresponding methods under the guidance of the Translation Compensation Theory.The report discusses losses and compensations at the lexical and syntactic levels.At the lexical level,since the source text(excerpts)involves floods of proper nouns like people’s name,place,book’s name,historical events,and writers and so on,as well as abstract nouns unique to the source language,the translator needs to convey the information faithfully and meanwhile take the underlying information and text features into account.Therefore,with regard to words reflecting related cultures,the translator decides to employ footnotes to deliver the message,which can not only keep the translation readable but also have target readers realize the cultural information behind the proper nouns.In addition,the method of specification is also a top priority to help target readers understand the text clearly.At the syntactic level,there is discrepancy in expression between two languages.First,the translator explains differences from grammar’s perspective and decides to use the method of shift to compensate losses in diverse expressions;then the translator analyzes the forms of attributive clause and adopts the fusion to manage losses in the expression so that the readers have a better reading experience.Through the analysis of the biographical translation---Great Writers: Barbara Kingsolver,the translator hopes that readers can get into deep understanding of the biographee.At the same time,the report analyzes the characteristic of the biographical translation and resolves the difficult points existed in translation.It is expected that the report can provide meaningful references to the similar text translation.