A Preliminary Analysis of the Issues of Taiwanese Translations: A Case Study of the Taiwanese Translation of To Kill A Mockingbird

Abstract

[[abstract]]Taiwanese has always been considered as a spoken language, and its development into a written language has gone on for many years. However, the written form of Taiwanese remained undecided. Currently, the more popular written form of Taiwanese is the combination of Chinese characters and phonetic alphabets. That is, if a Chinese character is proved to be the correct correspondent to a Taiwanese sound, the character is used. If not, the Taiwanese sound should be spelled in phonetic alphabets. This combination may be acceptable for common writings; however, for those who have no experience in Taiwanese readings, it can still be difficult. In this thesis, what I aim to do is to translate Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird in Taiwanese with Chinese characters. Considering that the difference of Taiwanese from English can be huge, I adopt Peter Newmark’s translating concept of communicative translation. That is, my translation will try to recreate the story in Taiwanese so that the target readers will enjoy the translated version as much as the original readers will. Afterwards, I will analyze my translation to see if there is any problem in Taiwanese translation. I will compare the Chinese and Taiwanese translations if necessary. Hopefully, this translation can bring some new ideas to Taiwanese writings and literature.