E-C Translation Skills Of Modifiers In Texts Of Science And Technology

English of science and technology is often hypotactic, as compared to other genres there are longer sentences and coordinate modifiers or attributive clauses ahead of headwords. The large amount of modifiers makes it occupy an important role of English to Chinese translation.Although English of science and technology has its own salient features, its grammatical rules coordinate with those of general English. According to the comparison between English and Chinese language, English is found to be more static with more adjectives and nouns, but Chinese tends to be more dynamic with more subject-predicate structures or verb-object structures. In Changing English Simon Potter points out the preponderance of nouns over verbs. Thus in English of science and technology descriptive attributive structures can be converted to subject-predicate structures or verb-object structures.There are some differences between English and Chinese modifiers in its classification, quantity and position. In classification participial phrases, infinitive phrases and attributive clauses are unique in English grammar; and the的(de) construction only exists in Chinese modifiers. In position Chinese modifiers are usually placed ahead of the center word as pre-modifier; and English modifiers can be placed either before or after the center word, with word-level modifier as pre-modifier, phrase modifier and attributive clause as the post-modifier. In quantity Chinese modifiers tends to be less than three, but there is no specific rules for the number of English modifiers. All those above mentioned differences can result in improper translation, including the too much Chinese modifiers, abuse of empty words such as的and所以, the disorder of modifier, and the misjudgment of attribution including multiple attributes and prepositional phrase function.Compared with researches done before, this paper incorporates attributive clauses into post-modifiers on the level of sentence, and Zhang Zhenbang (2000:622) has mentioned in A New English Grammar Coursebook that all modifiers positioned behind the center word including infinite clause and relation clause. This paper carries out a detailed comparison research of Chinese and English modifiers of science and technology on its classification and position. With the Chinese modifiers as the starting point, it concludes two translation methods:conversion into modifiers and non-modifiers. This paper aims to summarize translation skills for modifiers of English science and technology, and tell the situation where two translation skills are adopted. This paper picks up three articles of science and technology:Brazil Agriculture sector by China development Bank, Assembly Documentation by Kai Wuhan, ENSCO Pic’ Mergers and Acquisitions, JAVAESOO, and make a comparison to further discuss the translation skills of English modifiers of science and technology.