A Report On The Translation Of The Adventure Of Sam, The Black Fisherman

This report is based on the author’s personal experience of translating the last part of Washington Irving’s novel The Money Diggers-"The Adventure of Sam, the Black Fisherman"—under the guidance of Professor Sun Changkun during two weeks in September2013. Through this practice, the author came up with several useful ideas on novel writing and translation.To begin with, novel writing and translation are complementary to each other, and a qualified translator must be a good writer at the same time. Next, to be a qualified novel translator, a sound knowledge of novels is indispensable, like characters, circumstances and plot. Then, a combination of techniques should be adopted to deal with styles and sentiments, names and addresses, places and scenes, conversations and speeches, as well as rhetoric and punctuation. Last but not least, time management, information gathering, and pressure control are also very important to get the whole practice done.