A Report On Translating Churchill:The Power Of Words (Excerpts)

The book chosen as the source text of the author's translation is the biography of Churchill:the Power of Words written by Martin Gilbert.As Gilbert quotes from President Kennedy in the preface to the book that ‘He mobilised the English language and sent it into battle',it is widely acknowledged that Winston Churchill's writings and speeches have been fascinating and inspiring generations with his powerful words and thoughtful reflection.Throughout his public career,much of it on the world's stage,Churchill understood and wielded the power of words,which has made me have a strong desire for translating the book into Chinese in order to help Chinese readers appreciate the style of his writing and speech.Because of the time limitation,I have only chosen twenty extracts from the book for my translation.The topics of these extracts include expressing the love for his mother and foster-mother,his vision for the future and his thought of anti-wars.In translating,the challenge I am faced with is translating the power of Churchill's words,especially the power embedded in complicated sentences and culture images in his writing and speech into Chinese.For solving the problem,two pragmatic theories,i.e.,speech act theory and adaptation theory,are employed as the theoretical guidance in conducting the translation process.Apparently,the completion of this report is based on the two theories.The translation report is divided into two chapters.Chapter one includes the source text and the translated text.Chapter two is the translation report consisting of five sections.The description of the source text and the translation task are introduced in the first section.In Section two,translation process is mainly described in two aspects: one is the preparations for translation;the other is the problems and difficulties encountered in translation such as the interpretation of the power of Churchill's words,the understanding of complicated sentences and culture images.Section three is briefly introducing pragmatic theories used in the consideration of problems and difficulties in translation which are speech act theory and adaptation theory.Case study of translation is the fourth section.In this section,the analysis of how to translate the power of Churchill's words and culture images in the theoretical framework is mainly demonstrated.In the fifth section,the translator makes a brief conclusion for the translation report.