A Report On The Translation Of The Mystery Of Edwin Drood

The translation task is Charles Dickens’ posthumous work, The Mystery of Edwin Drood,which is provided by Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press. The book is composedof22chapters, in which Chapter16and17are translated by me.Dickens, as an excellent critical realism writer in the19thcentury, is reputed as “thefounder and greatest representative of critical realism in British novel history”. The Mysteryof Edwin Drood is Dickens’ first detective novel, takes the fight between the good and evil asthe core, and describes a series of stories caused by a choir music master, Jasper’scovetousness for the fiancee of his nephew, Edwin Drood. This book is full of humor andsatire, but pitifully Dickens passed away before finishing it, so it becomes a mystery aboutwhether Edwin is killed by Jasper or not and who the newly appeared white-haired person inChapter18is.The report includes six parts: the introduction, preparations before the translation, thetranslation process, the case analysis, thoughts after translation and conclusions.“The introduction” is about the source of The Mystery of Edwin Drood, the previoustranslation version, the translation requirements of Foreign Language Teaching and ResearchPress and the guiding principle I adopted in this literature translation.“Preparations before thetranslation” introduces the author, the novel, the intensive reading and analysis of text, andthe unification of proper nouns in detail.“The translation process” is divided into three stages:understanding, expressing and proofreading, and “the case analysis” is composed ofdifficulties in translation and the novel style analysis.“Thoughts after translation” mainlydescribes my reflections after translation—to become a qualified translator, I need to furtherimprove my self quality, try to be a generalist, stick to “the principle of being responsible to the writer, readers and myself”, and make use of all available resources so as to bring thesubjectivity and creativity of translators into full play.“Conclusion” emphasizes theimportance of translators as the translation subject.