A Translation Report On Nemesis(Part Two Of Chapter One)

This report is based on the translation of an American-Jewish writer----Philip Roth’s novella Nemesis, which was published in 2010. The novel develops a series of stories with polio that broke out among a Jewish community(Newark, USA) in 1944. The author using “Nemesis” as the novel’s title has embodied its tragic feature throughout the whole story. This novel consists of three chapters, and the report is a reflective summary of the translation process on the latter part of Chapter One(about 14,000 words). This part tells what happened after the heroine had arranged a job for the hero in Indian Hill, with the string of the hero’s emotion as the main plot.The report is composed of four parts: introduction, description of translation process, analysis of translation cases, and the summary. Among the four parts, cases analysis is the focus, including translation techniques, strategies, difficult points, and coping methods. Among translation strategies, translation of modal particles highlights the life aura; translation of the italic parts stressed the tone of conversation; selection of words corresponds with the context; translation of ballads attaches great importance to the rhyme and metre. The difficult points lie in the translation of words with Jewish connotation, translation of the proper nouns, translation of long sentences as well as the transition of the personal pronouns. Based on the above difficult points, the translator has adopted the strategy of thick translation, conversion of perspectives and so on. Meanwhile the translator pursues authoritative expression when it comes to the proper nouns. In the last part, the translator has offered complicated analysis on the problems resulted from the lack of professional knowledge and the inadequacy of the cultural background. In addition, the instructive significance of the translation practice has been pointed out.