A Report On The Translation Of Serious Sweet(Excerpt)

This translation report is based on the Chinese translation practice to Serious Sweet,which was published on Jonathan Cape by Random House on May 19 th,2016 and choosen as the Best Book of Sunday Times.It is a stream of consciousness novel written by Alice Louis Kennedy,who is one of the most notable and youngest Scottish authors.Though it seems disorganized,many small parts have been connected as a whole by the characters' interior behaviours.A.L.Kennedy expressed the two characters' introspection to London and their aversion to society incisively and vividly,which represents the common feelings of people living in London.The whole novel is made up of 529 pages and this report is a brief analysis to page 17-49,which mainly describes a world-weary female's(Meg)life and a man's(John)complicated feelings to his ex-wife.Toury's descriptive translation theory,especially its core------the initial,preliminary and operational norms,is used to guide the whole translation process,from choosing the source text,two principles for translator to refer,to three stages of proofreading the target text.To verify the property of adopting the descriptive theory in the translation,the writer has put the theory into translation process and illustrated details by giving some examples,thus try to find better strategies to translate such literary works based on keeping their overall style.The report consists of five parts.The first part is a general introduction to the thesis and the source text,including its purpose,significances;the second part describes the translation process,from preparation and understanding to proofreading;the third chapter tells details of Toury's description theory;the fourth part are cases study of this translation based on the three norms of Toury's descriptive theory;and the last part discusses the author's experiences and deficiencies in this translation from the perspective of a professional translator.