Challenges and Strategies in Translating Healing Narratives

Abstract

This study selects excerpts from Chapters 10–14 of the English novel The Little Bookshop by the Sea as the research corpus, focusing on translation strategies for healing narratives. Guided primarily by Nida's Functional Equivalence Theory and supplemented by Newmark's Communicative Translation Theory, the study identifies three core challenges: the nuanced rendering of emotional euphemisms, the cross-cultural transfer of idioms and metaphors, and the adaptation of culture-specific expressions. By comparing literal and free translation examples, the paper proposes targeted translation methods, including domestication-oriented adaptation for the target language culture, imagery reconstruction, pragmatic logic adjustment, and contextual restoration, and attempts to examine the feasibility of these strategies in conveying the emotional resonance of healing narratives.