A Practice Report On The E-C Translation Of Long And Difficult Sentences In Autobiographical Texts

This translating practice is based on the translation of the first four chapters from My Beloved World,the autobiography written by Sonia Sotomayor.An autobiography is a self-written account of the life of a person,which reveals the author's life story,though it is quite subjective sometimes.While reading this English autobiography,the translator is always sparkled by the long sentences which seems too beautiful and complex to be translated into proper Chinese thus arousing her interest in accomplishing its translation and selecting its first four chapters as the research materials used in this paper.While translating and writing,the translator tries to analyze the features of the long and difficult sentences used in this autobiography,such as the complex sentence structure,relative clauses and descriptive language.Eugene A.Nida proposes the functional equivalence theory,which values Semantic Equivalence and Stylistic Equivalence highly.To achieve Semantic Equivalence,such five strategies as Free Translation,Restructuring and Division,Omission,Affirmation,and Conversion are employed to conquer the translating difficulties caused by long and difficult sentences.As for Stylistic Equivalence,the translator focuses on the Equivalence of Tone and Aesthetic Equivalence towards the original text.Actually,autobiography serves as a window,through which the world outside can be observed.However,due to different cultural background and social customs,the expressions used in the source language can be of great difference from those in target language.Hence,the translator hopes to offer some of her translating methods to help later researchers achieve better equivalence between English and Chinese.