A Report On The Translation Of The Cult Of Shakespeare (Chapter One – Chapter Two)

The Cult of Shakespeare,written by F.E Halliday,is a book about the fortune of William Shakespeare.With evidence-based historical records,this book introduces people and events related to the bardolatry of Shakespeare,enabling its readers to better understand the power of the spell that the great name has exercised throughout the centuries.Though of great academic value,it has not been translated into Chinese yet.Therefore,the translation project can allow more Chinese readers,particularly English majors and those who have special interests in Shakespeare or English literature,to acquire reference material they in need of.The present report was based on the translation of Chapter ? and Chapter ?(12007 words in total)of the book.It consists of five parts: introduction,translation process,theoretical basis,cases studies and conclusion.Chapter One introduced the author Halliday,a British academic and Shakespeare expert,and his achievements,contents and linguistic features of the ST,significance of the project and also layout of the report.Written in an academic tone,the ST vividly narrates Shakespeare's changing fortune from 1616 to 1668.Chapter Two is about translation process,including pre-translation,while-translation and proofreading after translation.Preparations before translation include reading both ST and parallel texts,collecting reference books such as dictionaries on terminologies,phonetic,toponym,and also developing an overall project plan.Meanwhile,measures chosen to solve difficulties posed by polysemic words and complex compound sentences during translation were introduced.Chapter Three explains the theory's main contents,including receptors' responses and the closest natural equivalence,while academic comments on these principles were also discussed;by way of the theory of equivalent effect,the key was to ensure that information given in the ST be accepted by the receptor of TT in an equivalent way;accordingly,this chapter also outlined the importance and applicability of the theory in terms of linguistic features of the ST and the necessities of targetreaders.In Chapter Four,the essence of the report,cases were studied to clarify how relevant translation methods and strategies such as adding footnotes,conversion,amplification,restructuring,repetition and domestication were applied to cope with difficulties encountered,and also how were equivalences reached in different linguistic levels and in the translation of plays by taking language and culture differences into consideration;in Chapter Five,gains and limitations were summarized.The project successfully rendered a faithful and readable target text,but there is still room for improvement in representing the original style.Above all,the translation project allows the translator to better understand the importance of clarifying target readers and considering their receptivity and necessities before and in translation,and hopes that the present report could offer references for other translators in dealing with similar texts.