A Project Report On The E-C Translation Of The Sphinx Apple And Other Five Short Stories Of O. Henry

It goes without saying that the short stories of O. Henry enjoy a high statue in the world literature. Undoubtedly, there are many translation versions about them in China. Under the instruction of the supervisor, the writer chooses six short stories of 0. Henry including The Sphinx Apple, the Pimienta Pancakes, Next to the Reading Matter, The Whirligig of Life, After Twenty Years and The Man Higher Up as the texts of the project. These short stories focus on the lives of American lower-class people with humorous words and unexpected results (namely the O. Henry ending).The project is called "retranslation of classics". Why is the retranslation necessary? Translation does not come out of thin air, which is inevitably influenced by the unique social and cultural factors of each generation. Translation is by no means a simple transference from word to word. It is more than a cultural behavior and deeply connected with the culture and political environments of times. All this external factors to some degree have an impact on the text and the choice of its translation. Just as professor Xu Jun says:if the first translation of a literary work expands the space of its spread, whereas the retranslation can prolong the time of its spread.(许均,1993)While translating, the writer riot only exerts herself to understand in depth source texts but also accents on adding modern language elements to the translation, trying to make the translation of short stories of 0. Henry become more lively, "down to earth". To ensure the well-put words and emotions, apart from translating the titles, culture-loaded words and long sentences of the stories correctly, the writer also needs to interpret the O. Henry’s style of humor to the target readers. On account of the difficulties met while translating, the writer adopted many methods, such as literal translation, liberal translation and amplification, etc. Besides, under the instruction of Grice’s conversational implicature theory, the writer makes a deep analysis to the dialogues in the stories in order to better interpret the writing purpose.