A Study On Translationese In English

In many English-Chinese translated works, there are many westernized and unnatural expressions with blunt and obscure meanings, which are difficult to understand and appreciate. In the book The Theory and Practice in Translation, Eugene Nida coined a special word called "translationese" to refer to the translation phenomenon. Its feature is the mechanical translation of the original mode of expression or sentence structure, which is not up to the standard of the target translation. Meanwhile, its main symptom is due to use word-by-word translation mode, which ignores language structure, language features and convention of expression and makes the readers unacceptable and confused.At present, many experts have done researches on the issue of translationese in English-Chinese translation both abroad and at home. Many scholars and researchers have severely criticized such phenomenon a great deal in their books and papers. Only few of them notice the acceptability of translationese. With this consideration, the intention of this thesis is to make a comprehensive study of the problem of translationese.Also, many strategies in the thesis are introduced to overcome the translationese. Through the analysis, many translators are expected to pay more attention to this issue and in the translation process they would take measures to minimize translationese or even avoid it. Therefore, a dialectical and comprehensive treatment should be given to translationese. Some are not completely negative, because some have positive characteristics with the use of exotic words, phrases and sentences. By using the lively and vivid expressions, the translation can be more fluent and powerful so that it can be acceptable to readers. However, we must resolutely eliminate the expressions which are inconsistent with the law of the basic structure in target language.The thesis is mainly divided into six chapters. The first chapter describes the introduction of the thesis, including the research background, purpose and significance of the study, structure of the thesis. Then the second chapter provides a detailed literature review concerning studies of translationese both abroad and at home. Chapter three presents translationese and its main representations. It contains definitions of translationese, features of translationese, main representations of translationese. Chapter four analyzes some subjective as well as objective causes of translationese. Chapter five focuses on strategies of overcoming translationese. Chapter six serves as the conclusion of the paper, the limitations of the study are also listed. Through the thesis, we wish we would effectively improve the acceptability and readability of the translation and present a high quality translation to readers.