A Report On The Translation Of The Short Stories Of O’Henry

This report is about the translation of the short stories of O’Henry. His stories are exquisite instructure and the description is humorous and delicate. The author translated five short storiesfrom O’Henry’s works: The Gift of the Magi, The Cop and the Anthem, The Furnished Room, TheLast Leaf and Mammon and the Archer. All the translation work was done by the author alone.The main idea of Skopos theory is that translators should be aware of the situation of theintended readers and the translation purposes. These principles require the translator to selecttranslation strategies in accordance to the purposes of target text. Skopos theory played significantguiding role in this translation project.During the process of translation, the author used strategies of amplification, omission andannotation flexibly in accordance of translation goals and differences between two languages. Thelong sentences could be translated following the original syntactic order after being divided by themeaning groups. Because some long sentences were complicated and their structures weredifferent from that of Chinese, to reinvent sentence structure was also applied in translation. Eachcharacter in O’Henry’s stories has unique personalities. As a result, while translating, the translatorshould be aware of these factors and reflect their personalities in the target language by selectingwords prudently.This report indicates that translators should have comprehensive knowledge about thecontents of the translation project so as to define the writing styles and translation goals. Suitabletranslation strategies should be selected. In this way, the meaning of the original text can bereflected and its original flavor can be kept while the intended readers of the target text can besatisfied.