A Practice Report On E-C Translation Of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow(Chapter17-21)

This translation practice extracts chapter 17 to 21 from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow as translation material.This book is a biography written by Tomas Wentworth Higginson,and its protagonist Henry Wadsworth Longfellow is an outstanding translator,linguist,and literary master in America in the 19 th century.This biography contains manuscripts from many of Longfellow’s letters,excerpts from his early works,and records his growth and four trips to Europe.The selected chapters in this report own fluent language,abundant emotions,and truthful descriptions.The life experiences of the characters depicted in the report possess integrity and strong artistic appeal.The key points of this translation practice are to keep the biography’s readability and authenticity;This report faces the translation’s difficulties that are characterized by long sentences with complicated structure,religious verses and the manuscripts of letters with the background of the times,So,Catford’s Translation Shifts Theory is chosen to guide this translation practice report.This theory includes the level shifts and the category shifts.With the help of level shifts,this report analyses the shifts between English grammar and Chinese vocabulary;under the guidance of category shifts,this report discusses the embodiment of unit shifts,structure shifts and category shifts in translation practice.Among them,unit shifts are often used between phrases,clauses and sentences;structure shifts refer the conversion between active and passive voice,and between affirmative and negative sentences;class shifts mean to change the part of speech of word.The gains of this translation practice are as follows: level shifts and category shifts are instructive for the translation of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow,and only by making appropriate shifts and grasping the linguistic features of the source text can readers of the target text have the same reading experience as readers of the source text.Meanwhile,this report has a positive impact on increasing readers’ interest in reading Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and further disseminating Longfellow’s literary ideas.