On The Translation Of Ellipsis From The Perspective Of The Economy Principle Of Language:a Case Study

Ellipsis is a common phenomenon in language use, which pares down sentences to minimum words and phrases, and makes the focal points stand out; so is the case with George Saunders’ short story "The Semplica-Girl Diaries". To faithfully convey the essence and characteristics of the original text, translator should manage ellipsis in a reasonable way, which is the focus and the difficult part of the translation.In both Chinese and English, ellipsis can be generally divided into nominal ellipsis, verbal ellipsis, and clausal ellipsis. Yet circumscribed by different grammatical systems, ellipses in the two languages follow different rules, and the gap in-between challenges translators. The rules of ellipsis are not the same for the original and the target language, so the key to solve the problems for translators lies in how to balance verbal economy and communication while retaining the style of the original language as much as possible in the target language.On the basis of the translation of "The Semplica-Girl Diaries", and from the perspective the Economy Principle of language, the paper explores how to tackle ellipsis in the original text to realize the purpose of being expressive and economical in the target text.