Flexibility In Translation

This paper is a report on translating History of the Great Civil War1642-1649 by Samuel Rawson Gardiner.The major problem the author encountered in the process of initial translation is that the translated version is not smooth enough and thus hard for the target readers to understand.In order to overcome such a problem known as translationese,the author,guided by Translation Variation Theory proposed by Huang Zhonglian,made many revisions of the first draft.After analyzing the factors affecting the fluency and readability of the first draft,the author adopted appropriate means of flexibility,namely,amplification,omission,conversion,shifting and splitting,to polish the initial translation both at lexical and sentential levels,so as to make the final translation conform to the norm of written Chinese and provide target readers with good reading experience in the end.This report consists of five parts.The first part is the introduction,which introduces the task of the project and the significance of completing the task.The second part is the task process,which describes the whole process from pre-translation,in-translation to post-translation.The third part puts forward the problem the author encountered and offers the corresponding solution——Translation Variation Theory.The fourth part is case study,using specific examples to demonstrate what flexible ways the author employs to cope with translationese at expression stage in the process of translating under the guidance of Translation Variation Theory.The fifth part is a summary of the experience that the author gained in improving the fluency and readability of the target text after the completion of the translation task.