A Translation Project Report On The Lost Life (Excerpts)

As a translation report,this paper chooses the novel The Lost Life written by Steven Carroll who won Australian Miles Franklin Award in 2008.The novel is mainly about two young lovers dating in garden met the great poet and critic T.S.Eliot and his lover in his youth by chance,who are holding their wedding ceremony in secret and then two love stories unfolded.As a translation version of a literary novel,target reader's response and acceptance are the keys to success of it.So Nida's Reader's Response Theory is chosen to be guidance.As the original novel is a poised and beautifully burnished work,the language is colloquial but elegant with few pompous words,how to recreate the language feature and writing style to target reader is one of the focuses.Meanwhile,,there are a lot of long sentences describing characters' delicate mental activities without clear inner logic,which are also worthy of studying in translation.What's more,the novel is featured by elegant writing style,so the translated work must present same one to target reader,which has been discussed in this paper.A detailed analysis of the translation is made from lexical respect,syntactic structure and context style under the guidance of Reader's Response Theory.After finishing the project,the author have a deeper understanding of translation:knowing background knowledge and proficiency in English are necessities;Meanwhile,good translation must keep reader's response in mind and present style and features of original work to target readers rather than equalling to original work word by word.