The Translation And Report On The American Jeremiad (Chapter Four)

The American Jeremiad was written by Sacvan Bercovitch in1978. It is the first academic work about the influence Puritan thought has made on American literature. It sets forth the idea that Puritan values are the origin of both American literature and American history. The author emphasizes the important role the rhetoric of American Puritan sermons plays in American literature. As the text is so important and there has been no existing Chinese version of it, I decided to translate it into Chinese, in spite of my humble academic background, so as to provide some reference for scholars and translation theorists.The American Jeremiad consists of six chapters, and I chose to translate the fourth chapter--The Typology of America’s Mission, which is the most important of the six chapters. The current thesis falls into two parts:the text’s translated Chinese version of about ten thousand words and a report reflecting on the translation practice. The report is divided into four chapters. The first chapter is an introduction, which gives a brief account of the social background of the book, and explains the purpose and significance of the translation. The second chapter discusses the adopted translation techniques and strategies on the lexical and sentential levels, illustrated by specific examples from the translated text. The third chapter points out the difficulties I came across in the translation process and suggests ways to deal with those problems. The fourth chapter is the conclusion, which summarizes what I have learned from the translation project and what qualities a competent translator is supposed to possess.