An E-C Translation Report On East Of Suez-A Play In Seven Scenes (Scene ?-?)

This is an English-Chinese translation practice report,excerpted from the seven-scene drama East of Suez(Scene I-III),written by William Somerset Maugham,a prominent British dramatist,after his visit to China in 1922.Setting in Beijing,China,this drama focuses on the female protagonist Daisy's love affair with Caucasian George and Harry.So far there has been no Chinese version yet.Based on the primary guidance of Werner Koller's equivalence relations theory,this translation report has generalized the difficulties encountered in the translation process and then summarized them into the following three categories: 1.How to achieve the equivalence on lexical level such as partial equivalence,zero equivalence and antonymous equivalence;2.How to achieve the equivalence on syntactic level such as grammatical structures and expressive patterns;3.How to achieve the equivalence on contextual level such as situational context and cultural context.As to the lexical level,the translator takes Koller's connotative equivalence as a basic goal of achieving partial equivalence between two languages,and extension as a necessary translation skill.For the shortage of equivalence,the translator takes connotative equivalence as a basic goal of achieving zero equivalence,and deduction and substitution as necessary translation skills;taking denotative equivalence as a basic goal of achieving antonymous equivalence,and negation as a necessary translation skill.As to the syntactic level,the translator takes formal equivalence as a basic goal to achieve the equivalence of grammatical structures between two languages,and division and combination as necessary skills.For the sentence expressions,text-normative equivalence is regarded as a basic goal,and conversion and restructuring as necessary translation skills.As to the contextual level,the translator takes text-normative equivalence as a basic goal to achieve the equivalence of situational context,and substitution and conversion as necessary skills.For the cultural context,pragmatic equivalence is regarded as a basicgoal,and substitution as a necessary translation skill.According to the translation practice,this report holds the view that the translation of drama texts ought to follow the principle of equivalence.Reasonable use of translation skills can make the translated version conform to the characteristics of dramatic language,which is popular and easy to understand,direct and clear and naturally fluent,so that the effect of the target language on the target language receivers is the same as that of the source language on the source language receivers.