ACommentaryontheTranslationofTheShoesfromthePerspe

2512019年06期总第446期翻译研究ENGLISH ON CAMPUSA Commentary on the Translation of The Shoes from the Perspective of Documentary Translation文/谢荔荔and ask him to send some real stuff if the man is in earnest.“How dare you say so? I am going to tear your mouth!”Shou Ming finally took the gifts over from her mother. She got sort of annoyed by her younger sister—not for what she said about the gifts, but because she directly called out the man’s name. This name was hidden in Shou Ming’s heart; she was so careful with it that she could never dare to call it out. Her younger sister must have heard this name from somewhere else and she called it out straight without respect. This suddencall tugged at Shou Ming’s heartstring, as if there had beensome kind of connection between this name and her heart.2.Source Text (ST) IntroductionThe ST is excerpted from short story The Shoes(《鞋》)by Liu Qingbang. The story is set in China’s old society. At that time, a matchmaker introduced two young people to each other, then they started a romantic relationship and got married. The heroine in this novel is called Shou Ming, who has been engaged with her fiancé. The novel describes herpsychology when she received the betrothal gifts. The writer uses plain language in this novel, in which many idiomatic Chinese expressions can be seen. Secondly, this novel is written by Liu Qingbang, a Chinese famous novelist, and it won the Lu Xun Literature Prize (one of the four major literatureprizes in China), so the literary value contained in this novelshould not be overlooked. 3.Nord’s documentary translation and its application in this translationThe translator applies in this translation the documentarytranslation proposed by Christiane Nord in Text Analysis in Translation (1988/2005). Nord noted that documentary translation ‘serves as a document of a source culture communication between the author and the source text (ST) recipient’ (Nord 2005: 80). Documentary translation putsits emphasis on the source author and the source culture; it retains the pith and features of the ST’s language regardless of the awkwardness or the strangeness the TT recipient mayencounter in reading.When a translator chooses which translation processis to be applied in the translation, there are at least several1. The ShoesA girl named Shou Ming was engaged at eighteen. Onceengaged, a girl gets a fiancé and becomes a member of her future husband’s family. Shou Ming was not used to this form of address: fiancé, which was a bit unfamiliar but toosignificant to her. She would feel diffident and afraid to call itout . In her heart, she addressed her fiancé as “that man” or as “the man from that village”, following the local convention. The village the man lived in was not far from Shou Ming’s. A high bridge, and further to the south, another flat bridge connected the two villages. The two villages belongedto the same production group, and whose headquarters was in Shou Ming’s village.The man’s family asked the matchmaker to deliver thebetrothal gifts—a few pieces of clothes for making garments with, including corduroy, worsted, blue khaki, moon-white poplin and a large garnet kerchief. People were still very poo r then and thus c ould not afford ready-to-wear clothes. These fabrics were the best things at that time. Having heard that the matchmaker was coming to send the gifts, Shou Ming quicklyhid in her bedroom, covering her chest with her hands, daring not give a gasp. Her mother, instead, took the gifts for granted–she received those for her daughter.When the matchmaker left, the presents wrapped in a red square towel was given intact to Shou Ming. Her mother’s curved eyes were filled with smiles that she could hardlyconceal. She said to Shou Ming, “take them. They are from your future husband’s family.”The “future husband’s family” sounded a bit aloof toShou Ming; particularly when she heard her mother say so, she felt that she was being pushed out from this home. She called her mother like a spoiled child with a little protest and said:“who wants his stuff? I don’t want it!”Her mother said, “fine, that’s good. I’ll keep it and make dowry for your younger sister.”The younger sister was also at home—she directly called out the man’s name and said that she did not want his stuff. She wanted to return the betrothal gifts to the man’s familyand tell them that her sister disdained these worthless clothes2522019年06期总第446期翻译研究ENGLISH ON CAMPUSimportant factors need taking into account: firstly, the genre of the source: it is a novel of literary value; secondly, the purpose of the translation: it is to spread classic Chinese literary work to a foreign country, thus to allow the TT recipient appreciate Chinese literature; thirdly, the properties of the TT readership (such as: their educational level, aesthetic taste…): the supposed readership of this work are relatively well-educated readers, who have interests in Chinese culture. And theirreading purposes are to appreciate the literary work and to gain a deeper understanding of Chinese culture.Considering the factors discussed above, documentarytranslation is applicable to this translation. As Walter Benjamin regards ‘true translation is transparent: it does not obscure the original, does not stand in its light’, documentary translation similarly requires the translator to retain the “foreignness” in the translation, in other words, to produce a “transparent translation”.Documentary translation includes three translationmethods: word-for-word translation, literal translation and ‘foreignizing’ or ‘exoticizing’ translation, etc. (Nord 2005: 81).3.1 word-for-word translation: it reproduces the dictionand sentence structure of the ST in the translation, which is mainly applied in works related to linguistics; 3.2 literal translation: it prefers to use wording resembling the ST in its translation, which is mainly employed in political speeches, academic research theses…3.3 “foreignizing”or“exoticizing”translation: it retains the cultural elements and reproduces the background of the ST in its translation, despite the TT readers may encounter strangeness in reading. This translation process is mainly applied in literary translation.4. Case Analyses两个村庄同属一个大队，大队部设在她的庄。