Review and critical discussion aboutpeter newmark’s semantic translation and communicative translation

Before the 19th century, people had argued for long about whether translation should be literal translation or free translation. In 1981, Peter Newmark’s division of different types of texts into three types- expressive texts, informative texts and vocative texts and his proposal of semantic translation and communicative translation ended the dispute. Considering the importance of the semantic translation and communicative translation, this paper reviewed his division of different texts and the semantic and communicative translations to help readers better understand his translation methods, had a critical discussion about these two translation methods, and found two disadvantages of them: The semantic translation neglects aims of literary works for children and their target readers’ sociocultural backgrounds when translating, and the correlative approach of semantic translation and communicative translation is not suitable for translating tourism texts that contain poems and idiomatic expressions. Translators should fully consider the purposes and characteristics of the source texts and then choose the suitable translation method so as to convey fine target texts to readers.