A Translation Project Report On Everybody's Autobiography(Chapter 4)

This is an English-Chinese translation practice report.The translation material is a part of the fourth chapter of the book Everybody's Autobiography(1993),the auto-biographical work of the famous American novelist Gertrude Stein.This chapter mainly introduces what happened to the author Gertrude Stein,her same-sex partner Alice B.Toklas and others when they went to the United States to give lectures,which are interspersed with her various memories.The problems that translator encountered in the translation process are mainly concerned about how to translate sentences and vocabulary.Gertrude Stein's commitment to using new language expression and writing skills to endow her works with a vague,specious feeling increases the difficulty of translation.Besides,her abandonment of normative punctuation rules and use of many same words and phrases also added the difficulty of translation.In this case,translator mainly followed the guidance of Skopos Theory in the translation process.For vocabulary translation,the strategies of word conversion,free translation and amplification were used.For sentence translation,the strategy of disassembly and reorganization was used to integrate long and difficult sentences.At the same time,highlighting the author's characteristic of repetitive writing,the translator retained the repeated sentence patterns of the original text,making the translation version more faithful to the original text.The translator realized that a good translation of literary work should coordinate the writing background,writing style of the original author and polish repeatedly in order to meet the criteria of “faithfulness,expressiveness and elegance”.