A Report On The Translation Of Fairytale

This translation report is based on the American writer Danielle Steel’s latest novel Fairytale.In this novel,the heroine Camille was leading a happy and wonderful life at the outset of the story.But suddenly her mother died of cancer and then her father remarried a vicious beauty.Misfortunes came one after another.Faced with darkness and downs,Camille never lost heart,and at length got out of the trouble.Under the guidance of Eugene Nida’s theory of functional equivalence,this report studies and explores specific translation examples from Fairytale.This report consists of five chapters.The first chapter is the introduction to this translation project,including the purpose of translating Fairytale as well as the introduction of the author and the source text.The second chapter mainly expounds the theory of functional equivalence and its guidance for novel translation.The third chapter explains the procedures of translation,i.e.,pre-translation,translation and proofreading.The fourth chapter is the core of this report.The translator of Fairytale has exerted efforts to have a thorough grasp of the source language and finally presented the final version.Besides,the writer of this report gives an elucidation of the translation respectively from lexical,syntactical and cultural perspectives.At the lexical level,the translator employs conversion and explicitation to achieve equivalence;in regard to syntax,splitting and reorganization are applied to tackle long and complex sentences,and syntactic linearity to represent the style of the source language;in terms of culture,culture replacement and annotation are utilized to help strike a chord in the reader’s heart.The last chapter is the conclusion of this report,summarizing its limitations and giving suggestions for future novel translation.Based on the analysis and discussion,the writer of this report reckons that Nida’s functional equivalence guides the novel translation.Besides,she deems that qualified novel translation requires a large vocabulary of both the source and target languages,good language competence,and thorough understanding of different cultures.Despite the fact that the writer of this report may have done a job that is far from perfect in the above aspects,she hopes to make a humble contribution to the study of novel translation.