A Report On The Translation Of Gradiva:A Pompeiian Fancy

This is a report on translating Wilhelm Jensen’s Gradiva:A Pompeiian Fancy. It discusses three sorts of translation difficulties in:choosing proper words, rendering long sentences and retaining culture information. With Nida’s functional equivalence as main theoretical base, this report analyses the difficulties and their solutions with examples. In the end, there are some reflections upon the translation.The goals for being loyal to the original and being elegant in expression are pursued through the whole process of translation. With evident differences existing in linguistic structures and expressions of both English and Chinese languages, rigorous equivalence in forms is not much sought after when rendering on the level of lexemes, syntaxes and culture information. There are not rare cases in which the grammatical structures in the source language (SL) text are not rigidly followed in the target language (TL) text, so as to choose more adequate expressions. Long sentences are cut into sense groups, so that they can be re-organized into Chinese translations in natural syntactic orders. As to culture information, annotations are appealed to, so as to reveal the implication beyond the surface meaning. The translation of Gradiva:A Pompeiian Fancy is expected to represent the plots of the original story, together with the linguistic beauties of the SL and the appeal of the original text, so that TL readers may share the same aesthetic responses as is given by the SL readers, when reading this fantastic novel--Gradiva:A Pompeiian Fancy.Though exactly half of the translation of Gradiva:A Pompeiian Fancy is done, the hardness of a translator’s work has been so experienced without any discount, that a realization has been achieved in the reporter’s reflections that it entails quite a lot to be a competent translator, who must be knowledgeable both linguistically and culturally.