Chinese Existential Sentences And Their English Translation

The existential sentence (ES), in expression of the notion of existence, appearance or disappearance, is an all-important type of sentence in the Chinese language. This type of sentence has a very high frequency in Chinese, and therefore deserves a careful study in C-E translation.The present thesis aimed at an exploration of possible forms in English that can be used to translate various types of Chinese ESs and of the choices of these forms in C-E translation.The main points of the thesis can be summarised as follows: 1. The verb or verb phrase is the most essential factor for the classification of Chinese ESs. Depending on the nature of verbs, Chinese ESs fall into two general categories: static ESs and dynamic ESs. Static ESs refer to those sentences describing the state of the existent objects, in which the verbs are mostly static verbs, denoting the state of existent objects; while dynamic ESs refer to those sentences describing the action of existent objects, in which the verbs are exclusively dynamic verbs, denoting the action of existent objects. Because of the differences among different types of verbs or verb phrases, static ESs can be further classified into seven types: you ("有") sentences, shi ("是") sentences, The ("着") sentences, le ("了") sentences, Experiential ESs,Attributive-head ESs and NP-predicate ESs, and dynamic ESs are further classified into two types: the Progressive ES (W+zhe) and the Perfective ES(V+fe).2. Based on a close observation and careful analysis of all the typical example sentences collected from famous Chinese literary works and their English translations, it is discovered that most of Chinese ESs are usually translated into five forms in English, namely:1. There-be construction (English ES)2. LP+VP+NP construction3. NP+VP+LP construction4. NP(LP)+VP+NP construction5. Verbless construction3. As the Chinese ES is somewhat different from the English ES, not all Chinese ESs can be simply translated into English ESs. Through a close study, it is discovered that four English forms are usually used or chosen for translating Chinese ESs, namely, "there-be" construction (English ES), LP+VP+NP construction, NP+VP+LP construction and NP(LP)+VP+NP construction. Comparatively speaking, the constructions of "there-be", "LP+VP+NP", "NP+VP+LP" and "NP(LP)+VP+NP" are the major choices for the translation of static Chinese ESs, while the constructions of "NP+VP+LP" and "NP(LP)+VP+NP" are the major choices for the translation of dynamic Chinese ESs. As to the verbless construction, which is typically used to translate stage directions, it is the least common of all the five forms.4. In addition to the five common English forms for translating Chinese ESs, there are some other workable techniques, most notably the use of theprepositional phrase introduced by "with".