A Report On The E-C Translation Of The Legacy Of Cain(Excerpt)

The source text for this translation task is an excerpt from The Legacy of Cain by William Wilkie Collins,a notable British detective novelist.This fiction has no translation published in Chinese yet.With ingenious narratives,the fiction tells through four narrators the story of two sisters raised in a parson’s household.The excerpt is a flashback narrated in first person by the Governor,a witness in the story.Collins adopted different narrative points of view to present different perceptions,psychology and emotional attitudes of the characters,which contributes to the plot development,creation of vivid characters,and representation of the theme.Such unique narrative techniques pose certain difficulties for translation: How to understand and distinguish the different narrative points of view in the original work? How to reproduce these points of view and shifts in points of view?Under the guidance of Shen Dan’s study on narrative point of view,the translator analyses omniscient point of view,internal point of view,first-person external point of view and shifts in points of view.And the translator flexibly employs appropriate translation methods to address the specific translation difficulties in the text:1)As for omniscient point of view,literal translation is mainly adopted to represent the various characters and the plots;2)As for internal point of view,literal translation,addition and shift are used to manifest the character’s perceptions and psychological activities and unify his/her point of view in the centre of the story;3)As for first-person external point of view,liberal translation is adopted to intimate the way the narrator speaks in flashback,making the character more vivid;literal translation and omission contribute to clarifying the point of view of I-as-witness;4)As for shifts in points of view,literal translation and addition of time adverbs and aspect particles are employed to reproduce the narrator’s different psychological activities in the spot and outside the story.This translation practice shows that adopting different translation methods accordingly contributes to reproducing the narrative points of view and shifts in them of the original text,as well as the ingenious narrative techniques to the target readers.In addition,it is hoped that this report may offer help for researches on fictional translation guided by narrative point of view.