A Report On E-C Translation Of And There Was Light:Abraham Lincoln And The American Struggle (Excerpt) Under The Guidance Of Skopos Theory

The booming development of biography and the accumulation of cultural exchanges have led to an increase in biography translations.Some of the domestic biography translations have unsatisfactory quality,and the translations fail to conform to the historical and literary characteristics of the biography.This not only requires the translator to have a certain ability of rewriting and creation and the ability to correctly convey the information of the source text.In addition,there is relatively limited research of biography translation in China.Therefore,a study of biography translation is beneficial to providing Chinese readers with higher-quality translations and enriching domestic research of the biography translation.This report analyzes the linguistic features of an excerpt from And Then There Was Light:Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle by Jon Meacham from three perspectives:lexical,syntactic,and semantic.At the lexical level,the source text covers various names of the place,book,historical events,and culturally loaded words;at the syntactic level,the original utterances are mostly declarative sentences,containing passive sentences and long difficult sentences with specific tones and emotional expression;at the semantic level,the original text mainly contains two lexical markers,subordinate and connective,and the subject position is often filled by the subject and the adverbials of time.In the specific case study,the author proposes corresponding translation methods from three aspects: the Skopos rule,the coherence rule,and the fidelity rule,combined with the translation problems(such as special nouns,difficulty in analyzing real semantics,and large linguistic and cultural differences,etc.).The Skopos rule: the translator adds necessary detailed information,uses the methods of explanation and paraphrasing;the coherence rule:the translator adjusts sentence order according to cohesion and coherence,transforms passive voice,and translates special expressions into poems and lyrics in Chinese;the fidelity rule:the translator selects the meaning of words and phrases based on the context,and use the method of replacement of four-character patterns.In this report,the translator attempts to supplement the biography translation methods and the application of Skopos theory in biography translation research;however,since this report’s biography translation problems are limited,thus the proposed methods may have some limitations.