A Translation Report On Gary Snyder’s A Place In Space

Gary Snyder is a poet, an essayist, lecturer and environmental activist in the21th centuryin America. He is one of the members of Beat Generation with great accomplishments. Due tothe deep influence by Chinese traditional culture, his prose is clever and elegant with theessence of Chinese classic poetry. Nevertheless, researches on him mostly cover his poemsand less is done on his prose. Under this situation, the author of this report selects GarySnyder’s prosaic work A Place in Space (1995) to translate and analyzes the original text inthe hope of offering some references to the study of prose translation. A Place in Spaceincludes Gary Snyder’s essays and lectures, reflecting his thinking on Zen Buddhism andenvironment. He upholds the primitive way of living and believes that the whole environmentthe human live in is integral and all kinds of living things are interdependent with each otherand should be respected. Influenced by tradition Chinese culture, he writes in a profound waywith simple and poetic words and the articles are full of thinking and serenity. This report is toreproduce the original meaning and style of the source text and to achieve the ideal translationeffect.This report includes four chapters. The first chapter introduces current studies and layoutof the report. The second chapter describes pre-translation preparation. In this chapter, theauthor of the report gives a brief introduction to the original author and text, then analyzestext type, lexical features and stylistic features, and demonstrates the core ideas of Receptiontheory and feasibility. The third chapter is focused on translation process. The author exploresthree processes: understanding the original text, translation and revision, and proofreading.The fourth chapter is case study. Based on Reception Theory, the author applies naturaltranslation, inverted translation and division to resolve difficulties in translation. Thesetranslation methods are aimed to convey original meanings as much as possible and make thefusion of expectation of translation and expectation of readers.