A Report On The Translation Of "True Stories And The Facts In Fiction"(Chapter Four Of On Histories And Stories)

This is a translation report on On Histories and Stories by A.S.Byatt, of which Chapter Four isthe source text. On Histories and Stories is a collection of seven essays, and each essay, broad ranging andappreciative, examines either the process of storytelling or the canon of literary works, which supply prooffor her description for what criticism should be. The main content of the source text is: Byatt continues todiscuss the features of historical fiction, and she writes at length about language and the construction of agood modern sentence. The latter half of the essay discusses Byatt’s own historical fantasies, The ConjugalAngel and Morpho Eugenia, which probe into the essence of truthfulness in fiction. The main contents ofthis report are divided into four parts: Part One is the translation task description, including the sourcecontext description, objectives, significance and translation principles. Part Two describes the maintranslation theories: Based on Eugene Nida’s functional equivalence and Yan Fu’s “faithfulness,expressiveness and elegance”, this task is done completely. Part Three is about translation difficulties andmethods. The difficulties lie in the translation of words in italics, long sentences, and poems. Becauseitalicized words which in English often have some special meaning and function are not used in Chinese. Inaddition the rhythm of poems may disappear in the process of translation, and the translation of longsentences is the most difficult one. The methods include: words in italics translation, long sentencesprocessing, literal translation, literal translation with notes, and free translation. Part Four concludes withthe lessons, implications and unsolved problems in the translation task. The most important in thetranslation is the familiarity of the source text. And all the preparation must be completed very well.Besides, the translation should be revised repeatedly, and translation implications should be summarizedfrequently.