| As characters’ speeches play a significant role in the development of a story, the study of their translation strategies can help convey the meaning of the source text in the translation. Based on the translation of Hawthorne’s two short stories, "Egotism; or, The Bosom-Serpent" and "The Christmas Banquet", this translation report analyzes characters’ speeches from the aspects of characters’ speeches expressions and Speech Act Theory, and probes into the translation strategies of characters’ speeches. On the first level of the study, characters’ speeches in the stories can be classified into four categories from the perspective of different expressions:direct speech, indirect speech, free indirect speech and narrative report of speech act. Based on this categorization, the author employs Searle’s classification of speech acts and his definitions for direct speech act and indirect speech act to further analyze the specific act meaning of each type of speech in different expressions. In translating Hawthorne’s two short stories, different translation strategies are applied to represent the functions of different expressions and the act meaning of each character’s speech. The study shows that the strategies of maintaining original speech form and supplementing words are applied for the direct speech act of direct speech; the strategies of maintaining original speech form or conveying the meaning of the primary illocutionary act in a more direct form are utilized to translate the indirect speech act of direct speech; the strategy of transforming the free indirect speech in English into the form between free direct speech and free indirect speech in Chinese is employed in translating the expressive direct speech act in free indirect speech; the strategies of maintaining original speech form, supplementing components and conversion are adopted when translating the representative direct speech act of indirect speech and narrative report of speech act. |
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