A Study on the Chinese-English Translation of Li Peifu's The Book of Life from the Perspective of Prototype

The Book of Life is the final work of Li Peifu's “Plain Trilogy”. The book traces the trajectory of the changes in the times of cities and villages, and writes about the broken lives and remaining beliefs on the land of contemporary China. The dialect language is one of the major features. Li Peifu highlights the dialect customs, folk customs and folkways of the original region in The Book of Life through a large number of dialect languages including idioms, proverbs, and slang, etc. This paper takes Li Peifu's The Book of Life and Helena Laughton's translation of The Book of Life as the research objects to studies the dialect language in the book to explore the strategies and methods of translating the dialect language under the perspective of prototype theory. It focuses on the translation of proper nouns, idioms, proverbs, colloquialisms, slang and vague language. Idioms are mainly translated by explanatory free translation, proverbs and two-part allegorical sayings are translated literally, and dialects are mainly translated by naturalization free translation. The translation strategies such as literal translation, free translation and naturalization are flexibly combined, while maintaining the cultural charm of the source language and taking into account the acceptability of the translation, so that the translation and the original text are well matched and echoed. In translating dialect language, the strategies of naturalization and alienation are comprehensively used to retain the dialect characteristics of China, while improving the readability of the English translation and the comprehensibility of the translation audience.