| Each language has its own genius, that is, each language possesses its own distinctive characteristics which give it a special character. It is just these characters that lead to the translation difficulties. In order to solve these difficulties, translators have made multilevel researches and achieved a lot of fruits. Nowadays, translation theories based on contrastive linguistics are highly praised by people. The famous linguist Lu Shuxiang said, "I firmly believe that the greatest help for the Chinese students is to let them see the differences between English and Chinese, Let them compare these two Languages in every possible aspects such as word form, meaning, grammatical category, sentence structure and so on, thus they can get profound understanding through comparisons ." Many other translators also assert that" all the translation theories, methods and techniques should be based on contrastive studies." I agree with this point, but at the same time, I think it is inappropriate to make contrastive studies solely on the language surface. Pure comparative analyses on language components such as subject, predicate, object and so on are superficial. A probe into the relationships between language and thought will make greater progress in translation theories and make the translation more practical. What' s more, clear relationships between them will help us see the similarities and differences of English and Chinese, further unveil the nature of translation.Our knowledge about this world starts with the reasoning of concrete things. Thought produces language, and language is the tool and carrier of our thought. People practice thought of speech on a certain object and in their mind form a stream of thought, which is made up of meaings of different language forms. Languageis the exterior of thought, and its process goes from inner language to outer language. For example, we usually reason before our speeches and writings, or think about how to organize various language ele-ments, and this stream of thought is also the stream of meanings. When streams of thought are expressed from our mouth, they are called speechs; from our pens, they become writings.Why Chinese prefer repetition, but English people more often use substitution and ellipsis? The author believes that phenomenon can be attributed to different modes of thinking and aesthetics of these two peoples. Different modes of thinking produce different language expressions, and language is the carrier of thought. This thesis makes analyses of holism(wholism) V.S. individualism, the subjective thought, intuition and Chinese traditional aesthetic view and unveils the underlying causes of why Chinese prefer repetition and English people more often use substitution and ellipsis. The author hopes these analyses can help people achieve a deeper understanding of language difference and enhance the efficiency of language exchanges.This paper consists of four parts altogether.Part one focuses on theory analyses, and employs different modes of thinking and aesthetic view to explain the underlying causes of the different usages of repetition, substitution and ellipsis between Chinese and English.Part two is the comparative studies of repetition, substitution and ellipsis between Chinese and English.Part three is the translation methods based on above two parts. It explains how to use the approach of repetition when English employs the substitution and ellipsis approaches. This Part also proves that in actual bilingual exchanges, repetition substitution and ellipsis are frequently interwoven in both languages . We should make flexible translation instead of following rigid regulations .Part four is the conclusion. Using a comparative approach, the paper makes the point that parataxis-the characteristic feature of the Chinese language-can be accounted for by Chinese wholism, the subjective thought,intuition and Chinese aesthetic view. By the same arguement, hypotaxis-the characteristic feature of English language-is the natural outcome o... |
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