A Report On E-C Translation Of The Last Lion:Visions Of Glory （Preamble）

This thesis is a selected translation report on The Last Lion: Vision of Glory（from page 4 to 39）,a biography of Winston Churchill written by William Manchester.Covering from 1874 to 1932,the book delves into Churchill’s rough childhood and the early stage of his career.As a combination of informative and expressive text,the source text,featuring historicalness and literariness,not only embraces the facts and events about Churchill,but also includes religious,geographic,cultural,political,military,and historical background information,which not only poses barriers in understanding,but only brings difficulties in translation.Due to differences in languages and cultures,translation losses inevitably occur.Therefore,based on the stylistic features of the translation material,this report demonstrates four compensation methods in biographical translation.Firstly,in terms of the differences in languages,grammatical compensation was adopted to make up for the losses of tense and voice;Secondly,in regard to delivering the meaning behind the text accurately,methods including addition,extension,paraphrase,adaptation,and shift of perspective were adopted to achieve pragmatic compensation;Thirdly,to preserve the original style of the material and make the most of the advantage of the target language,aesthetic compensation was adopted by rhyming and translating words into traditional Chinese idioms;Finally,in dealing with culture-loaded words,intra-textual and extra-textual compensation were adopted by supplementing background information and annotation to help target readers avoid cultural default.Through the studies of translation compensation and the writing of the report,the translator has come to a conclusion that translation,as a complex work concerning the transfer of different cultures and languages,inevitably causes something lost.Therefore,it is a must for the translator to adopt certain compensation methods to make up for the losses in translation.However,one must be aware that too much is as bad as too little,which means compensation should be made according to certain principles r ather than at will of the translator.