A Translation Practice Report On Henry Wadsworth Longfellow(Chapter1-4)

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s status as a world-class literary master can be summarized as follows: in terms of times,Longfellow contributed to the abolitionist struggle by writing slavery during the American Civil War,driving American society and politics;As for the popularity of poetry,Longfellow’s poems were well known not only in the United States,but also in China.This report chooses the first four chapters of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow to conduct translation practice and research.These chapters mainly introduce Longfellow’s childhood and youth,the beginning of his literary career and his poetry influence.This report is meant to enrich the translation of domestic biographical literature and provide a platform for Chinese readers who love Longfellow.As a kind of literary translation,biographical translation requires the translator to reproduce the artistic image and style of source text in target language,so that target readers can get the same feeling and inspiration as the source text readers.Therefore,how to use different translation strategies to achieve the equal response between source text and target text readers is the core of Eugene A.Nida’s functional equivalence theory and the focus of this report.The main characteristics of biographical texts are authenticity and literariness,and its authenticity is reflected in the citation of a large number of dialogues,poems,letters,etc;its literariness is mainly embodied in distinctive cultural characteristics and frequent use of rhetorical sentences.Therefore,when translating biographical texts,the translator should pay attention to the meaning and the language style of the original text.Combined with the characteristics of biographical texts,the translator is guided by Nida’s functional equivalence theory,adopting certain translation methods and techniques,such as conversion,negation and division,in order to achieve semantic and stylistic equivalence between the target text and the source text.Through the translation of this book,it is hoped to further prove that functional equivalence theory can effectively guide the translation of biographical texts.This report will be divided into five parts: in the first chapter,the report is about the description of translation tasks,which introduces the background and content of original text,research status,the research significance and paper framework;in the second chapter,the report introduces Nida’s Functional Equivalence Theory including its development,effects and guiding significance in biographical text translation;in the third chapter,the report mainly introduces the preparation before translation,difficulties in translation,proofreading after translation;in the fourth chapter,the report talks about the main part,which is about specific analysis and the strategies applies in translation;in the last chapter,the report summarizes this translation practice,including major finding,limitations and suggestions for future research.