内容简介

本论文是一篇翻译实践论文，翻译文本选自美国华裔女作家伍绮诗出版的长篇小说《遍地小火苗》（Little Fires Everywhere）第一和第二章。这本书的故事发生在克利夫兰郊外一个叫谢克海茨的平静小镇。喜欢一切井井有条的理查森夫人迎来了新房客—单身母亲米娅及其十几岁大的有点早熟的女儿珀尔。围绕着一宗华人幼儿领养案，社区爆发了严重的对立，理查森太太和米娅之间也出现了裂痕。理查森太太决心查明米娅神秘的过去，结果招致了意想不到的后果，付出了毁灭性的代价。

此论文的目的是将所学的专业知识运用到具体翻译实践中。论文记录了此次翻译实践的整个过程，并用直译法、省译法、意译法和增词法等不同的翻译策略对此次翻译实践中的个别案例和常见问题进行了分析。同时得出最适于此翻译文本的翻译步骤和翻译策略，为今后同类文本翻译实践和研究添砖加瓦。本篇实践翻译论文主要由四个部分组成。第一部分为背景介绍，包括翻译任务目的及意义；第二部分为翻译实践流程的介绍,包括译前准备和初译搞的修改等；第三部分为英汉翻译过程描述,以实例分析翻译实践中所采用的主要翻译方法及策略；第四部分总结了在这次翻译实践中的收获与体会,并通过分析翻译实践中存在的不足,对翻译实践做出一些思考和建议。

翻译实践原文

Chapter One

Everyone in Shaker Heights was talking about it that summer: how Isabelle, the last of the Richardson children, had finally gone around the bend and burned the house down. All spring the gossip had been about little Mirabelle McCullough—or, depending which side you were on, May Ling Chow—and now, at last, there was something new and sensational to discuss. A little after noon on that Saturday in  May, the shoppers pushing their grocery carts in Heinen’s heard the fire engines wail to life and careen away, toward the duck pond. By a quarter after twelve there were four of them parked in a haphazard red line along Parkland Drive, where all six bedrooms of the Richardson house were ablaze, and everyone within a half mile could see the smoke rising over the trees like a dense black thundercloud. Later people would say that the signs had been there all along: that Izzy was a little lunatic, that there had always been something off about the Richardson family, that as soon  as they heard the sirens that morning they knew something terrible had happened. By then, of course, Izzy would be long gone, leaving no one to defend her, and people

could — and did — say  whatever they liked. At the moment the fire trucks arrived,

though, and for quite a while afterward, no one knew what was happening. Neighbors clustered as close to the makeshift barrier — a police cruiser, parked crosswise a few hundred yards away — as they could and watched the firefighters unreel their hoses with the grim faces of men who recognized a hopeless cause. Across the street, the geese at the pond ducked their heads underwater for weeds, wholly unruffled by the commotion.