Anaphoric Strategies For English-Chinese Translation Of Relative Clauses ——A Case Study Of Chinese Translation Of How America Eats:A Social History Of U.S. Food And Culture

Relative clauses are common in the English language and have powerful semantic functions.English relative clauses can modify NPs,carry supplementary information,and perform adverbial functions indicating cause,purpose,time,place,result,and condition.Relative clauses often prolong and complicate an English sentence.Due to the distinct differences between Chinese and English,relative clauses represent a big challenge in English-Chinese translation.Chinese scholars and translators have researched English-Chinese translation of relative clauses for years and proposed many translation strategies,such as the preposing approach,clause approach,subjectpredicate approach,adverbial approach,etc.These translation strategies are helpful but fail to solve all the difficulties in translating English relative clauses into Chinese.Translation strategies for relative clauses require further exploration.Food study that thrived in the 1980s has become a new area of historical research.How America Eats:A Social History of U.S.Food and Culture is a historical narrative by Jennifer Jensen Wallach.With a timeline stretching from colonial America to modern America,the book shows the complex American history of colonization,enslavement,and immigration.It examines the evolution of American dietary patterns and touches on the issues of politics,culture,race,and immigration through the culinary lens.This book is relevant for understanding the social relationships between food and culture.How America Eats:A Social History of U.S.Food and Culture has abundant relative clauses which are difficult to translate.The writer of this translation report chose the first two chapters of the book to analyse the translation of relative clauses.The research on the relative clauses in this book attempts to discuss the translation strategies for relative clauses and accumulate more knowledge on the unique American food culture and American society.The case study is the main method for this translation research on relative clauses.The discussion of the translation of relative clauses in this report is based on Liao Qiuzhong’s classification of Chinese anaphoric expressions:totally homomorphic referring expression（THRE）,partially homomorphic referring expression（PHRE）,and heteromorphic referring expression（HRE）,which includes synonyms,generic expressions,pronouns,demonstratives,and gaps.Translation examples are followed by a detailed analysis to illustrate the anaphoric approach to translating relative clauses.The translator comes to some conclusions about the anaphoric treatment of relative clauses in the Chinese translation.The THRE approach is applicable for translating short English antecedents which are convenient for replication.The PHRE approach can be used to translate both long and short English antecedents,but some changes are made to the modifiers to create Chinese anaphors in the translation.Synonyms can be used to translate literary English antecedents to give the translation a literary touch.Generic expressions can generalize a specific English antecedent in the translation without sacrificing its meaning,and the translation is,therefore,more acceptable.Pronouns and demonstratives can be used to translate English antecedents that are related to person,thing,time,etc.Simple Chinese pronouns and demonstratives make referential relationships clear in the translation.The gap can reduce the redundant translation of English antecedents to produce a concise translation.The anaphoric treatment of relative clauses in English-Chinese translation needs further exploration and is expected to offer inspiration for English-Chinese translation of relative clauses.