Effect Of Translation On The Development Of Long Sentences In Chinese Literature

The intention of this study is to explore the effect of translation on the development of longsentences in Chinese literature. By doing so, I want to draw attention to translation's role inproviding formal experiments for the enrichment of Chinese.In recent years, cultural studies develop rapidly in the field of translation studies. It insists onthe breakthrough of the prison-house of language, investigating translation in the largecontext of cultural studies. One of the important subjects for studies is to examine the effectof translation on the target culture, including its language, its social development as well as itsliterature. The relationship among translation, language and culture has drawn an increasingattention for translation researchers.This study focuses on examining how translation affects the development of long sentencesmainly in Chinese literature. It consists of six chapters. Chapter One introduces the concernedsubject and methodology applied in this thesis. Chapter Two provides a literature reviewconcerning the cultural school in translation studies so as to introduce the study of translationeffect. It also offers a theoretical analysis of in what general ways the effect of translation mayoccur, from three perspectives, i.e., translator, translation and social-literary situation. Sincemodern Chinese is mainly affected by translation in terms of absorbing some Europeanizedelements in its sentence structure, Chapter Three examines some acknowledged effects ofEuropeanized sentences in increasing the length of Chinese language. The development ofany language is an ongoing process, which is driven by both internal and external forces. SoChapter Four and Five offer a historical review of those two forces in increasing sentencelength in Chinese literary language, with the external force (translation) as a focus. ChapterFour investigates the historical evolvement of Chinese long and short sentences, revealing thetendency of Chinese sentences to increase in length with social development. Chapter Five isthe most important part of this thesis, which goes down to the historical survey since the MayFourth Movement. It briefly reviews the socio-literary situation as well as the translationhistory of the related periods, so as to find out how they function in bringing about the effectof translation on the increasing length and complexity of modern Chinese. It also takes casestudy of some translations and writings of the corresponding periods so as to show in whatway and to what extent people promote or accept the effect on Chinese grammatical forms.Based on the above studies, Chapter Six summarizes the result collected from each period,proposing to have a comprehensive understanding of the translation's role in offering formalexperiments for the enrichment of Chinese in such a global environment.