A Report On The Chinese Translation Of Black Arrow

This report, exampled by the translator's experience of translating the historical novel Black Arrow written by the Scottish novelist Robert Louis Stevenson from English to Chinese, mainly studies the specific stylistic features of the source text and the application of translation skills.The report consists of four parts: the description of the translation task, process of translation, application of translation skills and summary. First, the report briefly introduces the background information, requirements, purpose and significance of the translation task. It can be known that the ultimate goal of the translation task is to provide a readable and acceptable target text for the target readers—teenagers. Then the report discusses the preparation work and completion process of the translation. The specific stylistic features of the source text and the parallel text of the target text are analyzed in the preparation work, and the first translation draft and proofreading are mainly studied in the process of translation task completion. Based on the stylistic features analysis, it is found that Stevenson tends to use archaic words, culture-loaded words and synonyms to ensure the lexical diversity, to apply compound sentences, absolute construction and passive voice to rich the sentence structures, and to use sentence variety and narrative skills including the third-person narrator and external focalization to make the novel more interesting. Moreover, the report studies the application of translation skills in lexical, syntactic and textual translation. The lexical translation skills include addition, omission, conversion of the parts of speech, lexical meaning preference and use of Chinese four-character idioms. The syntactic translation skills consist of splitting, recasting, conversion of sentence elements and the translation of passive voice. The textual translation skills contain repetition, omission of conjunctions and rearrangement of sentence order. Finally, the report summarizes the translation task through the self-assessment, feedbacks from the employer, findings and limitations in the translation and provides suggestions for further translation studies. Based on the translation report of Black Arrow, it is concluded that the stylistic features analysis of the source text plays a guiding significance to the application of translation skills in literary translation.