A Translation Report Of Second Place (Excerpts) Under The Guidance Of Semantic Translation And Communicative Translation

In recent years,Chinese culture has become more and more closely connected with the world culture,and the translation of Chinese and foreign literary works has become an important means of cultural exchange.Second Place by Rachel Cusk is an epistolary novel with a high degree of simulation and autobiography.The book is presented from the perspective of a first-person narrative about the struggle of wills between a married protagonist seeking emotional fulfillment and an indifferent single painter.This translation report takes the first two chapters of the novel as translation materials,and uses semantic translation and communicative translation as theoretical guidance to systematically sort out the methods and techniques applicable to the translation of epistolary novels.The difficulty of translating such literary works lies in how to effectively convey the protagonist’s emotional expressions to the target language readers.According to Newmark,semantic translation should be as close as possible to the semantic and syntactic structures that conform to the norms of the target language,and reproduce the same contextual meaning as the original.And communicative translation requires the translator to make the effect produced by the translation on the target language readers as close as possible to the effect produced by the original on the readers.In the translation process,in order to accurately convey the emotional changes of the protagonist to the target language readers,it is necessary to adopt semantic translation and communicative translation theories according to the English-Chinese language differences in order to maintain the writing style of the original text and ensure the accuracy of the translation.Under the guidance of semantic translation,the translator reproduces the contextual meanings of the words,preserves the syntactic structure of the source text,and gives appropriate translations of cultural-loaded words in order to bring the readers of the target language into the cultural context of the source text.At the same time,the translator,under the guidance of communicative translation,transforms the parts of speech of the words and sentence patterns without changing the meaning of the source text,in order to accurately convey the message of the source text to the target language readers;in order to enhance the readability of the translation,the translator adds and omits words and expressions in the text,and divides long sentences.This translation report shows that Newmark’s semantic translation and communicative translation theory can provide effective guidance for the translation of such texts,provide reference for future translation practice,and is of great significance for the study of epistolary literature.