On The Translation Strategies Of English Prose

This thesis aims to, through a comparative study of English prose and their Chinese translations in the past Contests of "Han Suyin Award for Young Translators", sum up a set of strategies for translating English prose into Chinese, and ultimately provide some constructive insights for the future participants of the Contest as well as for enriching the theory and practice of English-Chinese translation of such prose. This thesis is composed of six chapters:Chapter One introduces the reasons for the topic selection, the purpose, methodology and significances of the study and the organization of the thesis; Chapter Two is a literature review of the research on Chinese translation of English prose as well as on that in the Contest of "Han Suyin Award for Young Translators"; Chapter Three focuses on analyzing the source text of English prose in the past contests while Chapter Four centers on text analysis of its translated version; Chapter Five, being the highlight of the thesis, attempts to present a series of strategies for translating such prose into Chinese based on the research of the previous four chapters; Chapter Six is a summary of the paper, generalizing the views put forward and narrating the experience and lessons as well as the merits and demerits of the present study.The set of strategies proposed in Chapter Five of this thesis includes four parts: the first part is the theoretical framework of prose translation in China and abroad, with a discussion of Liu Bingshan’s thoughts on prose translation and Eugene A. Nida’s communicative translation theory as the center; the second is a comparative analysis of different versions of prose translations, mainly on how translators should choose proper words, sentences and paragraphs, and structure the target texts, or how they should make the best choice; the third centers on the application of translation methods and techniques of English prose including literal translation, liberal translation, conversion approach, etc.; the fourth, namely, the summary of and reflection on translation, is the final, yet an essential step of the whole set.