The Report On The Translation Of “The Drowned Life” And “Good People”

On the basis of the Skopostheorie, this translation project report selects,translates and analyzes two short stories, “The Drowned Life” by Jeffrey Ford and“Good People” by David Foster Wallace, included in The Oxford Book of American Short Stories by Joyce Carol Oates.“The Drowned Life” and “Good People” represent two mainstreams in modern literature, which is magic realism and stream of consciousness novel respectively. In order to improve the translation competence of the translator and achieve a more accessible translation version to Chinese readers, this paper analyzes the translation project from four levels—lexical, syntactic, contextual and cultural level—on the basis of a better understanding of the author’s creation aim and the content, and by using the Skopostheorie as theoretical guidance and semantic and communicative translation as strategies. We hope for a well-proofread translation version to come out,which will serve for cultural exchange and make the authors’ works better known to more readers in China.