A Report On The Translation Of Biography Jane Austen-A Literary Life(excerpts)under The Guidance Of Steiner's Hermeneutic Theory

This is a translation practice report.The source text is excerpted from A Literary Life of Jane Austen in the series of Macmillan Literary Lives,which belongs to the category of literary biography.It is well known that Jane Austen is one of the most famous female novelists in English literature.She wrote seven books in her lifetime,and most of them describe the love and marriage life of a lady in a squire,landlord and bourgeoisie family.Her works reflect her unique observation as a woman,and her writing skills are also extremely deep,lively and interesting with detailed description.The author of the source text,Jan Fergus,is an English professor at Lehigh University.The biography mainly tells Jane Austen's experiences in writing,publishing and problems of authorship as a female writer between the 18 th and 19 th centuries.From the description of Austen's literary life,it indirectly reflects the social status and unfair treatment of women at that time.The report consists of five parts,and it is based on the hermeneutic theory proposed by George Steiner,a famous translator theorist in British.Steiner introduced hermeneutics into the field of translation studies by taking understanding and interpretation as the combination of hermeneutics and translation,and divided it into four steps— “Trust”,“Intrusion”,“Incorporation” and “Compensation”.In the process of translation,the translator took the four steps of hermeneutics as the theoretical guidance and analyzed its application from lexical,syntactic and textual level.Some translation techniques used in the translation such as the extension,ellipsis,amplification and so on.The translator also accumulated some experience in this practice,and realized the importance of knowledge accumulation and the qualities required for a qualified translator.