A Report On The Translation Of Joyce Carol Oates’ Black Water

The MTI graduation report discuss about a translation practice of Black Water (1992) by one of the American’s most famous novelists Joyce Carol Oates (1938-). Black Water was published by Plume Books in1992and there is not a Chinese version so far. The Black Water, one of her best books, had won the nomination of Pulitzer Prize in1993.Black water describes the sufferings of a young lady’s short life and demonstrates the complex mental activities before she died. With Oath’s exquisite writing skills, the themes like intense mental activities, sexual relations, sex and politics are integrated, bringing a profound meaning to this novel.Black water has two sections and thirty-two chapters in total. This report is concerned the translation practice(over15000Chinese characters) of the first thirteen chapters. Applying the basic translation principle "faithfulness" by Yan Fu (1854-1921), one of the most influential translators and translation theorists in China, the report analysis the problems and difficulties the writer faced while translating, as well as the availability of translation skills. The writer focuses on the translation strategies while translating. Translation approaches like figure of speech, parallelism and repetition are covered. It also mentions about the translation skills for long sentences. The conclusion, as the last part of the report, give an overall summery of this translation practice. The writer would like to take the opportunity to offer some suggestions for further translation studies.Literary translation focuses on "faithfulness and smoothness"——A great challenge to the translator while translating, because it is hard to make it perfect. To meet the needs of the target readers, the writer make full use of translation approaches and possess some solid translation qualities.