A Report On The Translation Of Love At Second Sight(Excerpts)

The report is mainly about the translation of Chapter 1-15 of Love at Second Sight – a novel written by Ada Leverson, who was a female writer in the 19 th century in Britain. As the novel is divided into 30 chapters, the translation of the whole novel has been done by two translators and they have translated independently. In the process of translation, I mainly employ literal translation to maintain the spirit and manner of the original, especially when dealing with the translation of irony and humor. I also employ translation techniques such as conversion and division so as to meet Nida’s “four basic requirements of a translation”, i.e., making sense; conveying the spirit and manner of the original; having a natural and easy form of expression; producing a similar response.This report aims to represent the translation process and show the problems and solutions. It not only covers the background information of the project and the introduction to the novel, but also covers the preparation work before translation including the tools, dictionaries and parallel texts that I have referred to while translating the text, and the timetable I have devised to ensure the completion and quality of the translation. In case study, problems and solutions on proper nouns, proverbs and idioms, maxims are shown by giving examples; this chapter will also introduce the translation techniques I have employed most, namely, conversion and division.Several conclusions on English-Chinese translation can be drawn from this report. First, the translation of unfamiliar proper nouns should be added footnotes that give the target readers the general ideas of who they are or what they are. Second, while translating the proverbs and idioms, the context must be taken into consideration and you must pay attention to coherence even though you can find the equivalent Chinese proverbs expressing the same meaning. Last but not least, the translator should create a much smoother and more idiomatic translated version that conveys the same meaning of the original text, so it is necessary for him/her to employ translation techniques, such as the conversion of parts of speech, parts of the sentence, impersonal subjects as well as division by picking out of words and phrases, splitting of complex sentence.