Selected E-C Translation Of Thomas Cromwell:the Rise And Fall Of Henry ?'s Most Notorious Minister (pp.10-26) And A Critical Commentary

This translation project contains two parts:the selected translation of a historical biography The Rise and Fall of Henry ?'s most Notorious Minister by British historian Robert Hutchinson and a critical commentary.The author,Robert Hutchinson is an associate tutor of the University of Sussex,and he is mainly specialized in the history of the Reformation.This book is the biography of Thomas Cromwell who maneuvered his way to the top by his endeavor in a court dominated by King Henry.The selected part mainly includes two chapters:Chapter One,The Most Hated Man in England;Chapter Two,'Make or mar'.The first chapter tells the early life of Thomas Cromwell including his family background,his early careers and how he got in touch with Wolsey and stepped into the political circle.The second chapter describes the downfall of Wolsey and Cromwell's process in entering the King's Council.The critical commentary firstly introduces the source text,the author of this book and the significance of this translation project.Then it introduces the theoretical guidance and strategies used in the translation project.The translation project employs Eugene A.Nida's Functional Equivalence theory holding that the translator should reproduce in the receptor language the closest natural equivalent of the source-language message,first in terms of meaning and secondly in terms of style.In order to achieve this kind of equivalence,the author of this project employed seven strategies from three levels which are lexical level,syntactic level and contextual level.As for the lexical level,three strategies are used such as addition,conversion,using Chinese set phrases.As for the syntactic level,the strategies like following the original syntactic order,turning passive voice into active voice,reinventing sentence structures are employed.As for the contextual level,the strategy of contextual translation is applied.This translation project has some realistic significance and researching value.On the one hand,Chinese readers can have a clearer understanding of Thomas Cromwell through this translation,while it conveys the information about historical events providing some historical materials to historian and ordinary readers who are interested in this history.On the other hand,the translation project proves that Eugene A.Nida's Functional Equivalence theory is helpful in translating this text.