A Report On The E-C Translation Of The True Mary Todd Lincoln(Excerpts)

This report is about the translation of the biography The True Mary Todd Lincoln,which tells the life of Mary Todd Lincoln,wife of Abraham Lincoln,who is indispensable on Lincoln's way to be president.It examines the totality of Mary's personality,including the admirable traits as well as those not so commendable.The author chooses the eighth chapter and the ninth chapter as the translation material,describing one of the most important time both for Lincoln and Mary,the ten years before the presidential election.Plenty of attributive clauses with complex logical relationship and multiple modifiers in the source text cause difficulties for translation.This report summarizes the characteristics of biographical text and the difficulties and features of attributive clauses in the source text.Due to the difference between English and Chinese,the author focuses on conveying the meaning of the original text through some adjustments in the translation of the attributive clauses in the source text to make the target text readable.Based on Communicative Translation Theory proposed by Peter Newmark,the author summarizes five translation methods when translating attributive clauses including pre-position,post-position,restructuring,conversion and combination.The author realizes that it is necessary to apply various translation strategies according to the sentence structure and semantic content to make the logic clearer and acceptable.