A Critical Commentary On Selected E-C Translation Of Thomas Cromwell:The Rise And Fall Of Henry ?'s Most Notorious Minister

Thomas Cromwell(1485-1540)was an influential politician in British Tudor Dynasty.Born grassroots,he managed to reach the center of power and be the King's Chief Minister by his extraordinary wisdom and inveterate intrigue.While in office,Cromwell assisted the King with the Protestant Reformation and parliamentary revolution,which enabled England to own the sovereignty and facilitated the modernization of British political system.The source text of the translation project is an excerpt of the English biography Thomas Cromwell:The Rise and Fall of Henry VIII's Most Notorious Minister.Chapter Three "Daily Round,Common Task" illustrates the process of how he managed to handle the empty exchequer and Henry's divorce from Queen Catherine.Chapter Four"A Bloody Season"mainly depicts Cromwell's success in the establishment of the supremacy over the Church by the Reformation.The critical commentary elaborates the significance of this project,theoretical guideline,translation strategies as well as the specific techniques for the translation.As biography literature is characteristic of authenticity and literariness,faithfulness and readability of the target text deserve serious consideration during translation.Under the guidance of Peter Newmark's theory,the translator attempts to achieve the informative and expressive functions of the biography and strike a balance between faithfulness and readability of the target text.Semantic translation,which targets to faithfully transmit the writer's opinion and maintain the original style of the source text,can be approached at lexical and syntactic levels.Translation techniques such as literal translation and syntactic linearity are used.Communicative translation,the purpose of which is to overcome the obstacles to comprehension and to offer a natural and smooth version for the target readers,is expounded at lexical,syntactic and contextual levels with concrete translation methods.By the analyses and explanations of specific examples,the translator concludes that both semantic translation and communicative translation are instructive in rendering biography.The combined and flexible use of these two strategies will ensure a faithful as well as readable version.