Hypotaxis And Parataxis In Translation

This paper intends to make a dialectical study on hypotaxis and parataxis in English and Chinese, to explore their implications for translation practice. The thesis of hypotaxis and parataxis is one of the most important research subjects for English and Chinese contrastive study and translation theory. It is generally agreed that the most important difference between the two languages is that English is hypotaxis-prominent, while Chinese, parataxis-prominent. However, it has not been paid enough attention to that both of the two exist in English and Chinese and complement each other. It leads to a one-sided tendency for the study on this topic and the translation strategies put forward on this basis as well. Therefore, a dialectical study is necessary and urgent now.This paper consists of five chapters.Chapter 1 is an introduction to this thesis, which points out the purpose and significance of making this study, introduces the definitions of hypotaxis and parataxis, and then presents a literature review of the previous study on this topic.Chapter 2 is focused on the hypotaxis-prominence in English and the parataxis-prominence in Chinese. The former lays emphasis on overt formal cohesion, which is manifested by the strict Subject-Predicate mechanism and the tree-like sentence structure, by the indispensability of connectives, relative words, prepositions, and by other cohesive ties like morphological changes, the frequent use of pronouns, the existence of expletives "it" and "there", and so on. The latter, on the contrary, puts stress on covert semantic coherence, which has its manifestations on the much more flexible Topic-Comment pattern and the bamboo-like sentence construction, like the flowing-water sentences, and on some other methods such as the word order, the rhetoric devices like antithesis, repetition or parallel, the compressed sentences, or the four-character construction, which also implicitly show the grammatical and logical relationship in a sentence.Chapter 3 discusses the relativity of hypotaxis and parataxis in English and Chinese. In this; chapter, it is analyzed that the dialectic between them is that in English, hypotaxis is dominant, which exists mainly below the sentential level, and parataxis is its complement, which mostly appears above the sentential level, and vice versa in Chinese. It is further explored that the choice of hypotaxis or parataxis in either English or Chinese may be affected by the type of writing and the theme of a text, the author's personal style and the change of times.Chapter 4 deals with the implications of this contrastive study for the translation practice. Specific strategies are put forward in a dialectical view. On one hand, the basic approach based on the contrast of hypotaxis and parataxis—the most distinct contrast between English and Chinese—is to transfer from hypotaxis to parataxis in the English to Chinese translation, and vice versa when translating from Chinese to English, which includes the transfer between the S-P pattern, the tree-like structure in English and the T-C pattern, the bamboo-like structure in Chinese, and between prepositions in English and verbs in Chinese, and the addition or omission of connectives or pronouns. On the other hand, since there also exists a relativity of hypotaxis and parataxis in the two languages at the same time, sometimes it is also necessary for us to keep the hypotaxical or paratactic characteristics of the original text in the translated version, or even intentionally apply hypotaxis in the translated Chinese version for parataxis in the English original text, or vice versa, to reserve or highlight its original flavors.Chapter 5 provides a conclusion. The whole paper expounds and proves that it is of great importance for us to hold a dialectical attitude when making the study on the topic of hypotaxis and parataxis in English and Chinese, to ensure it scientific, comprehensive and objective, and thus, to make it possible for us to explore its complete implications for the translation between the two languages.