Translation Of Six Lectures On Solitude And The Translation Report

This graduate thesis, composed by a graduate majoring in English translation, consists of two parts, namely a translation report on the excerpts translation of Six Lectures on Solitude, a book written by Jiang Xun, and the source text and the translated text. Firstly, the translator translated “Lecture One: Solitude in Love” of the book; secondly, she composed a translation report on the basis of the pre-translation preparations, the difficulties she met in translating, the solutions she adopted to overcome the difficulties, and the translation strategies and methods she employed.Jiang Xun’s discussion on emotional and sexual loneliness has resonated among the readers in both Chinese mainland and Taiwan. Living in a busy information era, we do need to strive for chances to communicate with ourselves. To illustrate his arguments, the author took many examples, those who were loners in history, as well as his students and himself. Therefore, his opinions about loneliness were shaped on the basis of his life experience and independent thinking.As a cultural text, the source text was heavily loaded with concepts and backgrounds concerning traditional Chinese culture, which posed the major hindrance in the translation process. Although the translator had armed herself with pre-translation preparations, including an intensive reading through the book, researching the cultural background in Taiwan, analyzing the characteristics of the source text, etc., she still encountered considerable difficulties in the translation process. Some seemingly simple words were hard to understand, and some expressions of Chinese characteristics were hard to be reproduced in idiomatic English.To fully translate the source text, the translator spared no effort to find feasible solutions. She flexibly adopted and combined two opposing translation strategies, foreignization and domestication. In the Case Study of the translation report, she demonstrated and explained how she employed different translation methods to handle specific sentences in the translation. In the end, she summarized the valuable lessons she had learned in the translation and the writing of the translation report.