代寫個人essay Self-mockery in Translation: An Australian traveler’s crossing trip in China

This essay deals with how the translator reflects the father’s (also the author’s in the source text) inner world, through the translation of the father’s self-mockery in the source text. Self-mockery means a strategy to laugh at somebody himself; also is a way of life. Self-mockery is a type of humor, which has closely relationship with culture that the father lives in. From the self-mockery, the father’s background, life experience, values, etc., could be conveyed to the readership. In the source text “from here to there”, the description is vivid and full of Australian humor, which is attractive to the English readers, especially fathers with the same dilemma. While in the translated text, how to precisely convey the relevant information to the Chinese readers is a big challenge to the translator.

Keywords: Self-mockery; Inner world; Translation.

1. Introduction
Self-mockery, make the person optimistic, is an important quality contained in one’s humor. Self-mockery, means seeing everything through rose colored spectacles, even in jail, which is an attitude of open-minded, also is a positive factor, reflecting a performance of good humanity. Every culture has an art of self-mockery, while in translation, how to convey self-mockery from one culture to the other is not so easy.

The translation practice is closely associated with the style of the translation work. Different translation works have distinctive linguistic features. Only through the mastering of the linguistic features of both source and target languages and skillful use of these two languages can the translator create the translation work that represents the original style of the source language. Different linguistic features also indicate cultural differences embodied in the work. For instance, concerning the genre of technology articles, the cultural elements embodied in this genre are relatively fewer; therefore, in translating of this genre, the accurate and faithful conveying of the information in the source language into the target language is much more important than the cultural conversion between these two languages. On the contrary, in the works of literary genre, such as novels, poems, prose and so on, culture becomes one of the most important factors in translation. If cultural elements are ignored, the translation work will become a skeleton made up by words and sentences without blood and flesh. In the readers’ eyes, a translation work without culture is thus soulless. Therefore, the excellent translators have to fully consider the handling the cultural differences in different genres in translation practice.

In this essay, the source text is from a book name FROM HERE TO THERE, which is a book about a farther and his son Jan left their jobs, studies, family and friends, taking six months to drive overland from Melbourne to London. Before leaving Melbourne, the father was at low tide, many things troubled him. While in the journey, life changes, his attitude toward life renewed and becomes more optimistic. #p#分頁標(biāo)題#e#
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2. Literature Review

In order to establish a standard for the transformation between the source and target language and reduce the differences, Eugene A Nida proposes the famous “dynamic equivalence” translation theory, that is, “functional equivalence”, based on the nature of translation from the linguistic perspective. According to this theory, he points out that “translation is the representation of the source language in the most appropriate, natural and equivalent language from the semantic to the stylistic sense”. Nida’s definition of translation points out that translation is not only the equivalence of word meanings, but also includes the semantic, genre, and stylistic equivalence. And the information conveyed in translation includes the superficial lexical meanings as well as the deep cultural information. The “dynamic equivalence” consists of the equivalence in four aspects: 1. lexical equivalence; 2. syntactic equivalence; 3. text equivalence; 4. stylistic equivalence. Among these four aspects, Nida believes that “meaning is the most important, and form is of less importance”. The form may very likely conceal the cultural meaning of the source text and hinder the cultural communication. Therefore, in literary translation, based on Nida’s theory, the translator should accurately represent the cultural implications of the source text, taking the four aspects of the dynamic equivalence as the translation principle. According to Nida’s translation theory, the processing of the cultural differences is closely associated with the semantic and stylistic representation of sources language in the target language. Only when the translation work represents the source language’s style and spirit from linguistic form and cultural implications can it be regarded as a fine piece of translation.

Newmark’s semantic and communicative translation theory is based on the three functions of language proposed by German psychologist and functional linguist Karl Buhler and Jacobson, that is, expressive function; informative function; and descriptive function. He also adopted Vygotsky’s ideas on the nature of thinking to distinguish to types of translation. Newmark believed that the early translation theory, that is, the discussion on translation in the pre-linguistic era, ignores the universal relationship between translation and semantic, thinking and language. The way to translate should be determined by the purpose of translation, the readers’ characteristics, and genre of the text. Thus, he proposed the “semantic translation” and communicative translation”. The “semantic translation” means that “ with the permission of the translator’s semantic and syntactic structure, the context meaning of the source language should be represented as accurate as possible”, while the “communicative translation” indicates that “ the effect on the target readers should be as equivalent as possible to the effects of the source text on the source readers”. The former realizes the faith to the original author and the latter emphasizes the faithfulness to the target readers.#p#分頁標(biāo)題#e#

代寫個人essayAlienation, also named foreignization, is a translation theory that takes the source language as its basis. The American translation scholar Lawrence Venuti is the representative of the alienation theory. He proposed the concept of “anti-translation”, that is, the translation work should entirely preserve the features of source language in style and form that is “different” from the target language and ignore whether the target readers accept the cultural image of the source language or not. As for the translators who support the alienation theory, the purpose of translation is to promote the cultural exchange and make the target reader to understand and accept the culture of the source language. Thus the translator is not required to alter the cultural image of the source language so as to enable the target readers to understand the translation. On the contrary, the translator should “transplant” the culture of the source language into the target language so that the target readers can directly understand and accept the culture of the source language. The theory that is opposite to alienation theory is the adaptation theory or the domestication theory, which takes the target language as its basis. Eugene A Nida is representative of adaptation theory. He believes that “the translation works should be dynamically equivalent, with both expression forms and culture implications being consistent with the target language”. For translators who support the adaptation theory, both linguistic and cultural obstacles should be eliminated during translation. It is the translator’s responsibility to eliminate the linguistic and cultural obstacles as that the target reader can accept the translation work.  In translation practice, alienation and adaptation are two opposite theories. But there is no contradiction between them and both of them can be applied by translators. Through the analysis and comparison of all the factors in translation, the translator can use alienation or adaptation to handle the cultural differences in translating so as to achieve different effects. For instance, when the translator wants to introduce the culture of the source language, the alienation theory can be applied to 代寫個人essayexpress the style and form of the source language. On the contrary, when the translator plans to adapt to target reader, the adaptation will be the first choice.