| The report is based on the English-Chinese translation practice of A Vigorous Enterprise Spirit: Merchants and Economic Development in Revolutionary Philadelphia.The source text,written by American historian Thomas Main Doerflinger,is a social,economic,and political study of Philadelphia merchants,which presents both the spirit and statistics of merchant life.The translation of the source text is a cooperative project,with nine group members in charge,and the translator is responsible for the second section of the second chapter of this book.In the process of translating,the translator finds that there are many verb metaphors in the source text.Metaphor,as a figure of speech,can achieve forceful and vivid expression.Verb metaphors are usually more subtle and obscure than other metaphors,because the tenor,vehicle,and ground may all be connoted in a short verb which results in the difficulty of translating verb metaphors.If verb metaphors can be reproduced appropriately,the translated text will be more expressive and the author’s originality will be delivered to the target readers.The report has four parts,including task description,process description,case study and conclusion.In the report,the translator focuses on the translation of verb metaphor,presenting the analysis process and translation methods of verb metaphor:(1)retaining the metaphor,including reproducing the same vehicle in the target language,simile as a way of translating metaphor and simile plus ground as a way of translating metaphor;(2)replacing the metaphor,that is,replacing the metaphor in the source text with the metaphor in the target language;(3)removing the metaphor,including paraphrasing and deletion.Through this translation practice,the translator realizes that the translation of verb metaphor is crucial for the accurate and fluent translation of the source text,and finds that retaining the metaphor is the preferred one among three translation methods adopted by the translator,because metaphors contain the core messages of the source text and will enrich the translated text.The translator hopes that the translation methods proposed in this report will help the translation work in the future. |
