E-C Translation Of Chapters17,19And21from Write Like The Masters And A Critical Commentary

This project is a selected translation of Write Like the Masters, which was published in2009by Writer’s Digest Book. The book was written by William Cane, an English writer and a professor of English at CUNY and Boston College. In this book, the author analyzes the writing styles of twenty-one great novelists. The beginning writers will absorb elements of the greats’ style and improve their work by imitating the greats. The selected part includes Chapter17, Chapter19and Chapter21,"Write Like Ray Bradbury","Write Like Philip K. Dick" and "Write Like Stephen King. In the three chapters, the writer introduces Ray Bradbury, Philip K. Dick and Stephen King to the readers and shows their writing techniques respectively.In translation, the translator comes across various difficulties. Firstly, at the lexical level, the meanings of some words and phrases found in the dictionary cannot be used directly in the translation. Secondly, at the syntactical level, the long and complex sentences often lead to problems in comprehension and translation. To solve those problems, the translator has resorted to many translation strategies. Especially, division is frequently used to divide words, phrases and sentences.Sentence is the basic unit in translation. If we want to translate well, we should know the syntactic differences between English and Chinese. Therefore, the critical commentary focuses on the study of division in English-Chinese translation. In E-C translation, division, one of translation strategies, usually refers to translate an English sentence into two or more Chinese sentences. But division is not restricted to translating long sentences. It can also be used to divide words and phrases. First, the translator discusses the reasons for division in E-C translation by analyzing the syntactic differences between hypotactic English and paratactic Chinese, between Subject-dominated English and Topic-dominated Chinese. Second, the translator gives further explanations about division, including its definition and range of application. Finally the translator uses examples from the translation project to illustrate how to apply division to divide words, phrases and sentences in E-C translation. The significance of the project lies in two ways. First, the translated text will be of some value to Chinese readers who want to learn about the writing techniques and lives of great masters. Second, the detailed discussion of division can be of some help to translation practice.