A Report On The Translation Of London Observed:Stories And Sketches(Excerpts)

This report selects four short stories from London Observed: Stories and Sketches as the translation object.The book is a short story collection which is written by the 2007 Nobel Prize winner Doris Lessing.Under the guidance of functional equivalence,the report analyzes the target text and puts forward the translation strategies based on the lexical,syntactic,rhetorical and textual levels.Short stories are an essential part of Lessing’s works,which not only large in number but also of great artistic value.However,domestic scholars mainly focused on the studies and translations of her novels,her short stories have not received enough attention till now.In London Observed: Stories and Sketches,Lessing vividly describes the life of London in the 1950 s and 1960 s with her distinctive writing techniques as an observer and inspires readers to ponder human nature.To make the target readers appreciate the unique charm of the book as the original readers,the translator applies the translation strategies and skills based on functional equivalence and attempts to achieve maximal equivalence on the lexical,syntactic,textual,and rhetorical levels.At the lexical level,the translator adopts literal translation,free translation and four-character words translation to deal with the key words that describe the appearances,actions and dialogues of the characters,so that the image of the characters are consistent with the original text.At the syntactic level,restructuring,splitting and omission are used to adjust the sentence structure,so that the structural cohesion and logical coherence of the long and complex sentences can be achieved which makes the translation smooth and natural.At the discourse level,the situational context and cultural context of the short stories are analyzed and literal translation,free translation and annotation are applied to meet the reading habits of the target readers.To enhance the literary and aesthetic value of the short stories,the translator analyzes the similes,personifications and rhetorical questions by adopting literal translation and free translation.This practice will help the domestic readers and researchers to understand Doris Lessing’s short stores better and provide some strategies,methods and references for translators who are interested in short story translation and relevant texts.