| The material for this translation report is excerpted from the book Stereophonica:Sound and Space in Science,Technology,and the Arts.In terms of content,the book mainly introduces the spatiality of sound,and illustrates how people gradually recognize it and apply it to fields such as science,medicine,the military,and the arts.In terms of linguistic features,this popular science book is easy to read but contains many acoustic terms and long English sentences which have posed challenges to the translation.In addition,as a popular science book,this book is reader-oriented and aims to convey information about sound spatiality to readers,which belongs to informative text according to Newmark’s text typology theory.According to Newmark’s translation theory,communicative translation theory fits for the study of the informative text,so this report studies the translation of long English sentences from the perspective of Newmark’s communicative translation theory,and discusses the English-Chinese translation strategies of long English sentences.After reviewing the previous research,this report finds that although Newmark’s communicative translation theory has been studied from multiple perspectives,it has yet to be applied to popular science texts and has rarely been used to study the translation of long English sentences.Under the guidance of Newmark’s communicative translation theory,this report also summarizes translation methods for long English sentences used by previous scholars and finds nine translation methods in total.Among them,five translation methods are found to be used more frequently in this translation practice,including:synchronizing,reversing,embedding,cutting,and voice-shifting.Specifically,the first three mainly focuses on adjusting the word order in source sentences according to Chinese language conventions.The last two centers on adjusting source sentence structures according to the context.The conclusion is as follows:First,long English sentences with a subject-verb(SV)structure,subject-verb-object(SVO)structure,or subject-verb-complement(SVC)structure can be translated by the method of synchronizing,which only needs to be translated into corresponding Chinese according to the order of the source text.Second,long English sentences with cause-effect logic,conditional clauses or components can be translated by the method of reversing,which needs to put cause part of source language at the beginning of the Chinese sentence or just put the conditional clauses or components in the source sentence at the beginning of the target sentence.Third,long English sentences with attributive clauses or attributives can be translated by the method of embedding,which requires putting the post-modifier before the central word when translated.Fourth,long English sentences with many subordinate components or sense groups can use the method of cutting,which requires dividing a whole sentence in the source language into several independent clauses in the target language at the conjunction part.Finally,long English sentences with a passive voice can use the method of voice-shifting,which requires converting the passive voice in the source language to the active voice in the target language according to the context.Online learning,working,and entertainment have been normal in the new media age.However,online learning,remote work,and cloud-based entertainment require better audio effects to give consumers a better immersive experience.The targeted text in Appendix is a tool for Chinese readers to learn to create high quality sound effect.Thus translating such texts has some practical value.In addition,the distinctive language features of the text are also of high research value,especially the English-Chinese translation of long sentences. |
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