Selected E-C Translation Of The First Two Chapters From The Invisibles:The Untold Story Of African American Slaves In The White House And A Critical Commentary

This translation project is based on the first two chapters “Introduction” and “William Lee and New York” from the book The Invisibles: The Untold Story of African American Slaves in the White House.Written by the longtime correspondent of The Associated Press,this book chronicles the experiences of African Americans who worked inside the White House from Revolutionary War to 1862.After President Abraham Lincoln issued The Declaration of Independence,the slaves gained their true freedom.Meanwhile,this book also describes how the slaves help shape America.The book notes that 12 out of the first 18 American presidents owned slaves,and these African Americans worked as cooks,butlers,maids and so forth.Holland,the author of the book,details their experiences in the new capital and the early chief executives' attitudes towards race.The selected text consists of the first two chapters.Chapter one “Introduction” is about the enslaved people behind those presidents.The author attempts to recover their identities and recognizes their contributions not only to the presidents they served but also to the whole of America.Chapter two mainly tells the story of Washington's favorite slave Lee.The translation project,guided by the Skopos theory,is conducted in terms of the Skopos rule,the Coherence rule and the Fidelity rule.In practical translation,the translator adopts diverse strategies such as division,rendering passive structure into active one,readjustment,omission and so on so as to make the translated version consistent with the expressions of the Chinese language.This project aims to help the Chinese readers know more about the untold history of slaves in the White House.The selected chapters introduce the source of slavery and tell the life story of the most famous slave William Lee in Washington's time.This project not only provides Chinese readers with a new perspective to learn about the American history but also is of some value to the future translation work and the related academic research activities.