An E-C Translation Report Of The Best American Short Stories 1984(Excerpts)

This is an English to Chinese translation report.The writing of the whole thesis is on the basis of the translation practice of two short stories in The Best American Short Stories 1984.One short story is A Father’s Story written by Andre Dubus,which introduces a Catholic whose name is Luke Ripley.His faith gradually diminished,and due to the love for his daughter,he broke rules.The other short story is Lena written by Mavis Gallant,which mainly introduces a beautiful woman called Magdalena.In this report,translation difficulties in the translation practice of these two short stories are analyzed,meanwhile corresponding translation methods are used for the case analysis.The translation difficulties are subdivided into three levels: lexical level,phrasal level and syntactic level.The difficulties at lexical level include: polysemous words,culture-loaded words and parts of speech.The difficulties at phrasal level includes: the phrases relating to the description of characters and the description of the environment.The difficulties at syntactic level include: long sentences and sentences with passive voice.The corresponding translation methods are used to tackle the difficulties at these three level.At lexical level,the translator chooses: determining the meaning of words,adding footnotes and illustrations and conversion of parts of speech.At phrasal level the methods include: turning phrases into clauses and using four-character structure.At syntactical level the methods include: dividing,inserting,converting the passive voice into the active structure and keeping the passive structure unchanged.Through this English to Chinese translation practice,the translator realizes that there actually exist some difficulties in the translation of short stories.In order to assure the accuracy and readability of the target text,an adequate preparation and a better bilingual expression capability are indispensable.