A Tactic Study On Cleaves’Translation Of The Secret History Of The Mongols

The study on The Secret History of the Mongols, the most prominent Mongolian literary work in the13th century with unprecedented historical and literary value, has been the focus of the Mongolists worldwide. While it is being studied from various perspectives, such as historical, literary, linguistic, social, military, ethnic, cultural, etc., the study on the numerous translations of the Secret History has not fully entered the scope of the academic concerns.Bearing the importance of the translation study of the Secret History in mind, the author chooses one of the most classic and influential English translations produced by the American Mongolist Francis Woodman Cleaves, and studies it from the perspective of language linkage mechanism-"taxis", applying the concept of "parataxis" and "hypotaxis" introduced by M. A. K. Halliday.After carrying out respective analysis of the tactic features of both the Mongolian text and its translation, it is found that while the original text is written in a direct and simple paratactic language, Cleaves’ translation abounds with hypotaxity. This particular characteristic of the translation is not caused by the intrinsic tendency in which the English sentences are structured. Rather, an in-depth examination of the various types of the hypotactic structures in the translation reveals that there are several reasons concerning the handling of certain grammatical markers in Mongolian which might account for the phenomenon directly. The most prominent factor is that the translator chose to interpret the converbals indicating paratactic connection of elements (in other words, relationship between elements with equal status) as adverbial markers that indicate subordination, and thus transformed most of the paratactic structures into hypotactic structures.The thesis further reveals that aside from the rendering of paratactic structures into hypotactic structures, another factor stands out as being important contributor of the extreme hypotaxity of the translation. The "head" indicator (such as (?)) and the "tail" indicator (such as (?))(the author’s terms) of the Middle Mongolian speeches are translated respectively, while the senses of the two overlap and mean one same thing:"said" or "saying". Meticulous translation of both the Mongolian words undoubtedly results in redundant structure of subordination and consequently gives the translation additional shade of hypotaxity.