A Report On The Translation Of Elmer Gantry(Capterlo-11)

The translation task—Elmer Gantry， is provided by Foreign Language Teaching andResearch Press. Its author is Sinclair Lewis—a famous American writer and also the firstAmerican writer who won the Nobel literature prize in American history. He was renowned inthe literary world for his description of the country life evils in western America and thereveal of the bad habits of people in the small towns; this novel described the religious societyin America and the author gave it the pungent satire and attack. Therefore it exerted the greatinfluence in society and also played an important role in the literary world both at home andabroad.This novel is co-translated by the author and the other six students and each of ustranslated a little more than20000words on average, and what the author translated is fromchapter ten to chapter thirteen. Through this translation practice, the author realized thattranslation is a high-level language art. before translation, translators have to realize thebeauty of the original, the translated text should accurately convey the rich thought and reflectthe unique style and profound artistic conception of the original, only in this way can theversion be met with the “faithfulness, expressiveness and elegance” translation standard.However, as there existing great differences between English and Chinese, it’s not easy tomake the versions reach the acme of perfection. It requires that translators should have manyaspects of qualities, and carry out a long time hard work and practice continuously.