A Project Report On The E-C Translation Of Becoming A Teacher(Chapter 1-4)

Biography,as a branch of literature,has always been readers’ favorite in recent years.Under the strategic background of “bringing in and going out”,learning from outstanding figures is becoming more and more significant.Hence,it is of great significance to conduct practical and theoretical research on biographical translation.The material of the translation project was selected from chapter 1 to chapter 4 of Becoming a Teacher written by Melinda D.Anderson,an American reporter.The book is an account of a rookie in the school who gradually grew into the 2018 Baltimore City Schools Teacher of the Year through her ongoing efforts.The book contains a number of vivid descriptions,proper nouns and long difficult sentences,which causes difficulties in translation.Since biographical texts are characteristic of both authenticity and literariness,in addition to being faithful to the historical facts in the original text,literariness is another important factor to attract the readers.The author,guided by the Skopos theory put forward by Vermeer,an outstanding German translation theorist,studied and analyzed the key and major difficulties encountered in the translation practice from lexical,syntactic and discourse levels.To solve problems,the author employed different translation strategies.In handling lexical difficulties,like those in terms of proper nouns,culture-loaded words,abbreviations and vivid descriptions,the author adopted literal translation with annotation and free translation to deal with the cultural differences and maintain the original feature of the source text.With regard to difficulties at the syntactic level,the author used conversion of the passive voice,splitting and restructuring of long and difficult sentences to accord with the Chinese expressive habits.At the discourse level,translation strategies such as reference and conjunction were employed to ensure coherence in the target language.In the end,the author made self-reflection and summary of this translation practice,hoping to provide some reference for the translation of similar texts.