A Report On English Translation Of James Legge’s Early Chinese Novels

The materials of this report come from the Chinese novels created by James Legge,including the Prodigal Son(《浪子悔改》)and the Biography of Abraham(《亚伯拉罕纪畧》).James Legge translated the Prodigal Son which is based on the Bible into the form of a Chinese novel,using the technique of interlocution.The Biography of Abraham is a legendary story of Abraham’s life.James Legge adopts the traditional Chinese novel writing method,namely,the chapter style novel(章回体小说),which is divided into four chapters.Apart from that,James Legge also created the discussion of“review after chapter”(回后评).This translation report consists of five parts.The first part is the introduction,which mainly introduces the background and source of the topic,research ideas,current situation and significance,and literature review.The second part mainly introduces the text content and characteristics of this translation practice and the solution to translation.The third part introduces the translation process,including pre-translation preparation,transcription and collation,processing in translation and post translation proofreading.The fourth part is a case study,involving the analysis of vocabulary translation,sentence translation and textual translation.Vocabulary translation can be divided into cultural-related words translation and dialect spoken words translation.This paper argues that translators should try their best to retain such words and not simply abandon them.It requires translators to make full use of various translation techniques to show the distinctive expression of these words.Sentence translation can be divided into vernacular translation,interlaced classical and vernacular translation,and classical Chinese translation.There are great differences in sentence structures between English and Chinese.The translator should not copy the original text mechanically,but should think deeply about the original Chinese text,translate it according to the syntactic sentence patterns and rhetorical features of English itself,so that the target language is smooth and fluent.Textual translation can be divided into textual system and textual cohesion.The Biography of Abraham(《亚伯拉罕纪畧》)features significantly on Chapter style.The translator needs to reproduce this Chapter feature in the target language.Meanwhile,textual cohesion is mainly embodied in the use of ellipsis between sentences.The translator should pay more attention to the features of textual cohesion in the target language.The fifth part is the summary of translation practice.The author summarizes the gains and shortcomings of this translation practice.