A Report On The Translation Of The Life Of Samuel Johnson

This translation report gives an analysis and summary of the translation process of the finalpart of the life of Samuel Johnson. This part mainly makes an overall description of Johnson‘slife before his death, which enables us to better understand the noble soul of a giant. The bookis a biography of Samuel Johnson written by a British biographer–James Boswell in the late18th century. It is a collection of the anecdotal materials and trifles of Johnson‘s life, whichvividly shows us a true-to-life and distinct master in literature. Also, Boswell would not avoidmentioning the weaknesses and fallacy of the hero.This report takes the translation of The Life of Samuel Johnson as a case study to illustratehow to achieve―Faithfulness, expressiveness and Elegance‖with the intended purpose toreach target readers. Despite the fact that literature translation is bound to be faithful to thesource text by accurate and fluent translation, the language features and style should not beneglected. In this report, examples are selected to demonstrate how to flexibly apply freetranslation, adjustment and conversion to achieve―Faithfulness, expressiveness andElegance‖. In this way, the translation may trigger the same response from and have the sameimpact on the target readers as the original text did upon the source text readers. Thistranslation report is divided into four parts. The first part is the description of the translationtask, including the introduction to the author and biography, and reasons for choosing this text.The second part is the process description, such as pre-translation preparation, process oftranslation etc. The third part will be the case study based on Yan Fu‘s translation principles.And finally comes the conclusion part, including the translation experience.