Report On English-Chinese Translation Of Long Sentences From The Perspective Of The Functional Equivalence Theory

In an era moving on the wheels of artificial intelligence,scholars and experts in mounting number have been keen on its potential impacts in their own fields.In such context,the book collaborated by Henry Kissinger,Eric Schmidt and Daniel Huttenlocher has been issued by the end of 2021.The source text of this translation practice is selected from Chapter Five and Chapter Six of the book.By reviewing the function of nuclear weapons in the past warfare,the selected chapters analyze and predict how AI and Al-enabled weapons will be deployed in the future warfare and international landscape.The source text features numerous long sentences with complexity in grammar,which are typical of rigorous,objective and informative techno-politics texts.Meanwhile,it is such feature that poses challenges in translation.From the perspective of the functional equivalence theory,this report adopts a case study approach.Firstly,with the aid of CUC_Paraconc V0.3 software,statistics on the number of words,sentences and sentence length are analyzed.The results illustrates the commonality of long sentences in the source text.Secondly,in the process of translation,the translator concludes that the typical linguistic features in the long sentences are post-positioned attributive modifiers,parentheses,parallel structures and logical ambiguity.Lastly,on the basis of the previous studies,the translator employs the strategies of embedding,sequencing,repetition for long sentences with post-positioned attributive modifiers;splitting and sequencing for long sentences with parentheses;addition of semicolon and restructuring for long sentences with parallel structures;and the methods of adding or altering logical connectors are specifically proposed in dealing with long sentences with ambiguous logic.It is the translator’s cordial hope that this report could serve as a reference to the theoretical researches and the practice of English-Chinese translation related to the techno-politics texts.