A Report On The Translation Of A Garden Of Earthly Delights (Excerpts)

Joyce Carol Oates(1938-),one of the most influential novelists in American literary circle,won numerous prizes and honors.For half a century,she was nominated many times as a candidate for the Nobel Prize for literature.Her 159 works involving novels,poetry,prose and dramas,distinguished herself from other famous writers by her bold venture on various types and unique style.Her achievements have been recognized by academic world at home and abroad.A Garden of Earthly Delights was one of her most excellent works,which successfully manifests her writing style of psychological realism.There is,however,no a Chinese version so far.A Garden of Earthly Delights has three parts in total named as Carleton,Lowry,Swan respectively.This report is concerned with the translation practice(over 30,000 Chinese words)of the first three sections from the first part.Applying the basic translation principle of “faithfulness,expressiveness and elegance” by Yan Fu,the thesis analyzes the problems and difficulties in the process of translating this novel as well as the availability of translation skills.It focuses on the translation strategies employed in translating A Garden of Earthly Delights.It mentions some translation approaches to dealing with figure of speech like simile,parallelism and parody as well as complex sentences in English.It also involves such translation skills as literal translation,free translation,adding and restructuring.Finally,the thesis gives an overall summary of this translation practice including problems and limitations in the process of translation with a hope of offering some suggestions for further translation studies on this novel.