A Report On The Translation Of English Prepositions In The Translation Of The Constant Princess

The report is based on the writer’s translation of The Constance Princess, a historicalfiction novel by English novelist Philippa Gregory. The novel tells the story of QueenKatherine, also known as Catherine of Aragon, Infanta of Spain, first wife of HenryVII, from her childhood to her replacement by Anne Boleyn. She leads an eventfullife in the court of England. By alternating third-person narration with first-personnarration——Katherine’s thoughts, the author present a vivid and thorough image ofKatherine. Readers cannot help but fall in love with Katherine for her courage,tenacity and elegance as the story unfolds.In the process of translation, the translator encountered many obstacles, forexample, the translation of long sentences and of culture-specific names, when toapply domestication and when to apply foreignization. However, what interested thereporter was the translation of English prepositions.As is known, English is a preposition-focus language. Almost every sentence inEnglish has at least one preposition. The use of prepositions is flexible, and they havevarious functions. Chinese, however, doesn’t use prepositions so frequently as English,and most of Chinese prepositions were derived from verbs. Therefore, it is necessaryto discusses Chinese translation of English prepositions. In this report, the writerdivided English prepositions into several categories and studied the methods totranslate English prepositions. In the report, the reporter discusses three major ways oftranslating English prepositions into Chinese, that is, literal translation, word classconversion and preposition omission.In the end, how to use English prepositions is both difficult and essential for anEnglish-learner. The reporter hopes that by analyzing the translation of Englishprepositions, she can learn more about them and use them more frequently andskillfully.