The Representation Of Literariness In The Translation Of Historical Documentary Text

The translation report is base on the the translation of the Introduction,Chapter I and Chapter III of Daily Life During the Black Death.The source text belongs to historical documentary text which tells people’s daily life during the Second Pandemic.This text features both truthfulness and literariness.It not only conveys real historical information,but also use a variety of rhetorical devices.Because of different thinking modes and forms of expression between Chinese and the Western people,the representation of literariness becomes the difficult point of this report.Based on the text,the author discusses representation of literariness in two perspectives: translation of syntactical rhetorical devices and semantic rhetorical devices.The former includes the translation of metaphor,personification and transferred epithet;the latter includes the translation of inverted sentence and parallel structure.At the same time,the author mainly makes use of strategy of domestication,translation methods of literal translation and free translation as well as translation techniques such as addition and transformation to represent literariness.Through the report,the author’s understanding of literariness and ability of translation has greatly improved.The author hopes that the report could give reference for other translators working on the text of the same type.