A Report On The Chinese Translation Of The Every-day Life Of Abraham Lincoln (Chapters Ⅶ-Ⅷ)

The materials for this translation practice,The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln(Chapters Ⅶ-Ⅷ),written by an American writer named Francis Fisher Browne,were recommended by my teacher.It is about 13,000 English words in total.The selected text had not been translated into Chinese by any translator,which met the requirements of the topic selection.Chapters Ⅶ-Ⅷ of this text presented the characteristics of truth,history and literature.These parts described the work and life of Lincoln when he returned to Springfield to work as a lawyer after he was forced to give up his seat in Congress through the recollections and comments of related people,Lincoln’s own letters and speeches.The article contained a large number of memories and comments,character appearances,psychological and plot descriptions,and even a lot of legal professional words;the background knowledge was complex and logical.There were few contextual logic connectives and not closely connected.In addition,context semantic was difficult to grasp and sentence length was different with a pattern of simple sentences and complex sentences mixing together.Therefore,it was the primary task of this translation practice to correctly understand the original text and accurately convey the text content.The translator started from Nida’s functional equivalence theory,analyzed the three aspects of vocabulary,syntax and text equivalence and used the translation strategies such as conversion,addition and annotation to make the translated sentences smooth and improved the readability of the translated text so that the readers of the target language can have a deeper understanding of Lincoln’s star-crossed and ups and downs in his life,and gained strength from it to move forward bravely.Through this translation practice,the translator understood the language style and text characteristics of the biographical texts,accumulated the translation methods and skills needed for the biographical texts,which laid a foundation for the translation of relevant texts in the future.It was hoped that these practical translation examples would provide theoretical support and reference for the translation of relevant biographies in the future.