A Translation Report On "Old Tales, New Forms"(Chapter Five Of On Histories And Stories)

This is a translation report on Chapter V of On Histories and Stories written by A. S. Byatt, the title ofwhich is “Old Tales, New Forms”. A. S. Byatt, an expert both in novel and literary criticism, is one of themost famous women writers in the contemporary British literature. This academic monograph is a generalcritique on the works of European literature, which was published firstly in the UK in2000by Chatto&Windus Random House. This task is completed by our five group-members in collaboration, and thecontent of Chapter V that the author has translated is about11,000words, which mainly researches novels,tales, myths and the particular narrative patterns of them. This translation report can be divided into fourparts. The first part analyzes some background information of this project, including the source of the text,the introduction of the author and the analysis of the text. The second part introduces the translating process,which consists of translation preparations, translation difficulties and solutions to them, and revision afterthe translation. The third part illustrates the translation principles and translation skills. It mainly adoptssome basic translation skills such as Diction, Amplification, Division and Four-character Phrases, with theguidance of the famous translator-Yan Fu’s three translation principles of “Faithfulness, Expressiveness andElegance”, to have on the experimental analysis and demonstration according to the Source Text and TargetText. And the last part is a conclusion that mainly discusses the translation inspirations of the author andsome unsolved problems.