A Report On The Translation Of My Name Is Lucy Barton(Excerpts)

The translation material selected by the translator is My Name is Lucy Barton(Excerpt Chapter 1-Chapter 8)written by Elizabeth Strout,an American contemporary author.The novel is a female author's memoir which describes the complex relationship between the author Lucy Barton and her mother.In this book,the author tells in calm and meticulous language the story about how a female author reconciled with her mother whom she had not seen for many years during the author's stay in the hospital.Under the guidance of Nida's Functional Equivalence Theory,the focus of this report is to realize the functional equivalence between the original text and the target text.Specifically,this report discusses the translation strategies of articles and attributive clauses.The translator believes that Nida's Functional Equivalence Theory plays an important role in literary translation,especially in novel translation.The core of Nida's Functional Equivalence Theory is: taking the meaning and style of the source text into consideration,the translator should choose the most appropriate equivalent expressions so as to effectively transmit the original thought and writing style to the target readers,and taking the readers' reactions as the measuring standard for the target text.This report can be divided into four parts.The first part is the task description.In this part,the translator gives a brief account of the background knowledge related to the translation material,the reasons why the author chose this material,the objective of this report and the problems encountered during translation.The second part is the process description,mainly including the translator's pre-translation preparation,task schedule and quality control methods.The third part is the main part of the report,which mainly uses specific cases to discuss the methods about how to translate articles and attributive clauses into Chinese.The last part is the conclusion part,describing the major findings of the translator and the limitations of this report andsuggestions for other translators.Through translation and analysis,the translator understands that English and Chinese are so different that translation has become an art requiring meticulous care.In the process of writing the report,the translator greatly deepens her understanding of translation and improves her translation skills.