A Report On The Translation Of Wallace Stevens' Poetic Essays

This English-Chinese translation practice report selects Stevens' poetic essays "A Poet That Matters" and "The Irrational Element in Poetry" as the source texts.The two essays mainly present Stevens' poetic ideas.The translation of them and the summary of the methods used in the process show great significance to the studies of Stevens" poetics and the translation of his related works in China.This report includes four parts,namely introduction,translation process description,case analysis and conclusion.First,there is a brief introduction of the background,purpose and significance of the translation practice.Next,this report gives a detailed description of the whole translation process and analyzes the main features and translation difficulties of the two essays respectively in diction and syntax.Then,based on the translation of the report's author,it presents a detailed discussion of the methods used in translating the vivid and solemn expressions in diction,and the short sentences and the long ones with parentheses in syntax.Finally,this report summarizes the translation process and the methods used in it For "The Irrational Element in Poetry",this report uses two parallel texts to make a comparison.It concludes that,in diction,the vivid expressions are always metaphorical ones and should be translated through correspondence,if possible,to maintain the literal meanings and reproduce the features of such words and phrases,while if this approach influences the comprehension of the translation,then explicitation is an alternative.The solemn expressions are always formal words and can be translated with four-character structures.In syntax,the short sentences are always translated through amplification,while the long ones with parentheses are complex and can be translated through reversion,combination anddivision so as to transform a long English sentence into some short Chinese clauses and guarantee their clear logical relations,thus making the translation idiomatic in Chinese.The report shows that,in translating poetic essays,the translator should try to make the linguistic features of the original recur in the translation while transferring the content accurately so as to make the translation meet more needs of the readers.It is hoped that this report could serve as a reference for the translation of poetic essays.