A Contrastive Study Of English And Chinese: Its Guiding Effects On E-C Translating Strategies

Although translating can date back to the birth of human languages, its difficulty remains insurmountable today. That is because: on one hand, translating is a cross-linguistic, cross-cultural and cross-social communication activity, involving a field too broad for individual translator to completely grasp; and the complicated translating process, which includes original author, native readers and several other items imposes so many restrictions on translator that there is almost no room for one to bring his ability into play freely; on the other hand, it has been taken as the criterion for translating that the translated version and the original text should be totally equivalent in diction, tone, style and readers' reflection, named "faithfulness". To jump out of the dilemma of these two, translator must possess great ability of rendering between two languages. The formation and improvement of this ability cou(.ci start with the grasping of what differences English and Chinese have, especially why there are such differences. In view of the characteristics of the synchronic contrastive study, as well as its conducive or instrumental effect on translating, a synchronic contrastive analysis of English and Chinese may be taken as the theoretic foundation of the discussion about translating strategies.Chapter II of the dissertation carries out a brief review of the recent contrastive study in China, finds that contrastive study has developed from the simple comparisons at the level of individual language points to the research at the level of the essential attributes and the generative motivation of each language. The influence of the systematic attributes of languages, of the thinking modes and of the cultural background of each nation upon the superficial language differences is the hot spot of this study.Chapter III performs a contrastive study of the internalized systematic attributes of English and Chinese, the habitual modes of thinking and the cultural background as the basis for analyzing the root causes of those superficial differences of language. Then it enters into a descriptive contrastive analysis of the sound level, the word-character level, the phrase level, the sentence level and the text level in English and Chinese, and try to explore the root causes of those differences. The Chinese and the English differ from each other in its own internalized system and each internalized systematic attributes will affect its morphological structures, including writings and sounds alike. When it comes to "the habitual thinking modes", it refers mainly to a contrastive analysis of the differences between the English-speaking people and the Chinese-speaking people in thinking modes. The English-speaking people are inclined to look at things in an individual (microscopic), rational way and have strong sense of objectivity. The Chinese-speaking people tend to look at things in an integral, perceptual way and have strong sense of subjectivity. And the analysis of "the different cultural background" is in relevance to the different life-style, production-mode, and conventions of each people. According to the interactive relationships between language and thoughts, as well asinlanguage and culture, these three factors have assignable influence upon various superficial divergences of language.Chapter IV interprets the results of the above contrastive analysis from the theory of surface structure and deep structure. The differences in superficial language expression essentially are the different methods of organizing the deep-structured contextual units. The root causes of those superficial language differences actually are the root causes of the different methods of organizing the deep-structured contextual units. Because there is a contradiction between the hypotaxis morphological structure and the parataxis contextual meaning of English, while Chinese is dominated by the parataxis at both levels, so far as E-C translation is concerned, to render from English to Chinese in fact is to deconstruct the o...