A Report On The Translation Of ALI A LIFE(excerpt)

This is a report on the first three sections of the first part of ALI A LIFE,which is a biography of Jonathan Eiger,the bestselling author of the New York Times.ALI A LIFE begins with an interview with friends,family and colleagues of Muhammad Ali as well as the recent documentary records found in the 1960 s and the FBI,and explores the personal life,political views,religious issues,and all the complexity of the characters of Ali,the legendary boxer,showing the reader how one of the great Americans of the 20 th century is shaped by the environment and how the world is affected by this unusually complex child.The first three sections of the first part of the biography mainly tell a few stories about Ali's childhood,including the opportunity to become associated with boxing.This translation report mainly analyzes the guiding role of descriptive translation strategies in this translation from three main aspects: vocabulary,sentence and style.Biography is a product of the combination of history and literature.Both of the creation and translation of biographies should be true and reliable,in line with historical facts.The description of biographies should be truehearted rather than casuistical and faithful rather than absurd.The authenticity and literary characteristics of biographical literature determine that the translator must respect the true historical background of the translation,but also take into account its literary nature.Descriptive translation studies study from a macro perspective,focusing on the target language,with the result of translation as the research object.The literal translation or free translation,formal equivalence or functional equivalence are no longer the rules to judge what is good and what is bad of the translation.Descriptive translation studies proceed from the objective facts,and objectively describe and analyze translation phenomena.In the process of this translation practice,the author deeply understands the relationship between translation theory and translation practice,and improves translation ability.Before this translation practice,the author lacks a deep understanding of the applicability of translation theories.All translation theories the author knows are quite fundamental,so the author fails to know better about more different theories.In the process of translating this biographical text,the author has a deeper understanding of the descriptive translation studies applied,including the normative theory of Gideon Toury,which will also have some applicability in the author's future practice.In addition,the process of writing,revising and finally completing the practice report for several months,to some extent,exercised the author's perseverance,improved the author's translation ability and laid a good foundation for the future translation practice.This report includes five parts.Chapter one starts with a description of the translation task.Chapter two introduces the introduction and development of descriptive translation theory.Chapter three introduces the translation process,including pre-translation preparation,translation process and post-translation verification.Chapter four focuses on the analysis of translation cases,which introduces the guiding role of descriptive translation studies from three aspects: vocabulary,sentence and style.Chapter five is the summary of the problems and experience gained in this translation report.