English-Chinese Translation Strategies Of Parentheticals

This report is based on the translation practice of a CITIC Press-sponsored project,Victory at Sea,a book published in 2022 about maritime history written by Paul Kennedy,an American history professor at Yale University.The book covers naval battles,convoys,amphibious landings,and strikes at sea and explores the rise and fall of great powers during World War II.In the course of translation,it is found that the text contains many parentheticals in various forms,including in particular some insertions within a structure,which poses difficulties for readers to understand and for translators to convey the meaning.In this respect,the translator attempts to explore the translation strategies of complicated parenthetical expressions via analyses of cases.Taking into account features of the source text and drawing upon strategies in previous studies,this report outlines six feasible translation strategies: linear translation,integration,inversion,recasting,division,and bracketed gloss.Guided by translation compensation theory,the translator discusses compensation strategies for parentheticals in different contexts,including annotation with the text,amplification,specification,fusion,and generalization at the lexical level.At the grammar level,the translator suggests adding adverbs of time and changing the part of speech.Compensation at the discourse level includes converting sentence structure,adding logical conjunction,person deixis and demonstrative pronouns.The report also points out the significant role of conversion punctuation in processing information and maintaining discourse cohesion,which can also be classified as a translation compensation strategy at the discourse level.This report takes a new perspective on insertions within complex parentheticals.The strategies and compensation methods adopted in this report can help improve translation quality and provide insights and ideas for the translation and study of parentheticals.