A Report On The Translation Of London To Ladysmith Via Pretoria (Excerpts) From The Perspective Of Functional Equivalence Theory

This translation report is written on the basis of the translation of a book from nonfiction—London to Ladysmith via Pretoria,which is a personal account of the Second Boer War,written by the former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill.In this translation practice,the author explores non-fiction translation strategy,methods and techniques with functional equivalence theory as guidance,and gives some suggestions for future translation and research.During the pre-translation preparation,the author analyzes the source text and selects functional equivalence theory to guide this translation practice.While translating,the author comprehends the source text in all respects and finishes the translation.After finishing the translation,the author invites her supervisor to give her some advice.To sum up,functional equivalence theory can be used to guide this translation practice.Under the guidance of this theory,domestication is the translation strategy,under which liberal translation is adopted as the main translation method for this translation practice,except for the translation of the names of persons and other proper nouns.As for translation techniques,annotation,embedding,recasting,supplement of conjunctions and so on are applied to in this translation practice at lexical,syntactic and textual levels.Furthermore,compared with the existing Chinese version of this book,the major improvement in the author’s translation is her emphasis on cultural background and the target-text readers’ reading experience,which can be seen from the translation of proper nouns and the supplement of conjunctions between sentences.This translation practice improves the author’s translation competence,gives some enlightenment to the translation of London to Ladysmith via Pretoria,the translation of other Winston Churchill’s works,and non-fiction translation.