A Practice Report On E-C Translation Of Step By Step:the Life In My Journeys (Excerpts) From The Perspective Of Skopos Theory

The source text of this translation report is the first five chapters of Simon Reeve’s Step by Step: The Life in My Journeys.The first chapter recounts the author’s journey to Africa for shooting documentary Equator,the second to fifth chapters recall his youth life,describing how and why he suffers from depression bit by bit and his attempt to try to get out of his negative emotion step by step.Apart from containing a set of verbs,this book also employs rich rhetorical devices,such as metaphor,hyperbole,synecdoche and personification,which make the whole book appealing and easy to excite readers’ imagination and resonance.In addition,the stories mainly take place in Africa and Britain,so the source text boasts a few culture-loaded words and proper nouns.In the source text,it’s quite common that a series of verbs and adjectives in coordinate structure are used.And long and complicated sentences are widely used,which is also a major feature of English language.Therefore,in order to transfer the information of the original text and promote cultural communication,the translator selects Skopos theory as the guidance for this translation report.According to Skopos theory,translation is a purposeful behavior that mainly involves the purposes of source text,initiator and translator,which can affect the selection of translation strategies and methods.Based on the features and difficulties of the source text,this translation report classifies the difficulties into two levels: lexical level and syntactical level.The former includes three aspects: verbs,nouns and adjectives,and the latter covers appositives and attributive clauses.On lexical level,the difficulties mainly comprise rhetorical expressions,polysemous words,proper nouns and culture-loaded words.During translation,the translator adopts free translation,diction,conversion,literal translation,transliteration,addition and annotation to tackle them.On syntactical level,the pain lies in the handling of long and difficult sentences.For this,the translator uses conversion,literal translation,division and so on.Therefore,from the perspective of Skopos theory,the translator could address different difficulties by adopting distinct translation methods,so as to realize the purpose of translation and meet the needs of target readers.Besides,this translation practice not only allows the translator to have an idea of the characteristics and functions of autobiographical texts,but also lays a preliminary foundation in and accumulates experience in the translator’s future autobiographical translation.