E-C Translation Of Why Are You Still Here? And A Critical Commentary

The original text this translation project is based on is an essay from the London Review of Books (LRB, Vol.37. April,23,2015. Page3-14) authored by James Meek.In his article, the author describes the success and decline of the fishing industry in Grimsby, a coastal town located in southeast England during the past 60 years and shows how the downturn affected the social, political and economic life of the local people.In executing this project, the translator has drawn on Eugene Nida’s theory of translation. Nida’s theory mainly consists of two concepts:(1) formal equivalence and (2) dynamic equivalence. Nida claims that the success of the translation depends above all on achieving equivalent responses. Therefore the primary objective of this translation project is to activate in Chinese readers a response as close as possible to the response an English reader may have when reading the source text. For this purpose the translator applied different translation strategies in the translation process.The translator finds that Eugene Nida’s theory may facilitate the English-Chinese translation process, but translators should also be aware of its flaws and choose translation strategies flexibly.