A Contrastive Analysis Of Word Order Between English And Chinese And Its Application In Translation

Word order exists in different levels including words, clauses and sentences. This thesis discusses the word order between English and Chinese, and carries out a contrastive analysis from words to sentences. Firstly, a contrastive analysis is made on attributive and adverbial words. Secondly, the thesis focuses on the canonical and non-canonical sentences in both language. Thirdly, a comparative study is conducted on order between sentences. The canonical word order in English is in syntactic dimension. Chinese, however, is in pragmatic dimension. The author argues that the canonical word order in Chinese is not the syntactic pattern likes SVO, instead it is the "topic-comment" pattern. English inverted structures emphasize end-weight, while Chinese inverted structures are more flexible. English and Chinese are in different linguistic dimensions, thus, in translating word order principle and functional equivalence is the primary concern. As far as the textual consequence is concerned, word order is related to the sequential organization patterns:The sequential organization in English is indirect-linear and deductive order and Chinese is in an indirect-circular style. Therefore, translators should take the differences and similarities of two languages into consideration, and properly adjust the word order with different thinking pattern of target language. At last, according to the analyses between two different languages, four rules are concluded as follows:for emphasis, for textual cohesion, for clause balance and for literature description, which are should be obeyed by translators to make their works more accessible to source text and acceptable to readers.