On Translating Long Sentences

The writer chooses the book Not for Turning—the Life of Margaret Thatcher, the biography of Margaret Thatcher, as the source text for translating. This book tells the entire life of Margaret Thatcher: from the humble experience in her father‘s grocery to the British Prime Minister. Besides, it also introduces later miners‘ union strikes, Falkland war and many other historical moments as well as her life after she left the Ten Downing Street. The writer mainly translates the first chapter and the eighteenth chapter which respectively tells the impact of Grantham and character and its consequences. The main features of the two chapters lie in English long sentences which make the translating process full of problems. This report will discuss the translation of English long sentences in detail.The main features of English long sentences lie in multilevel linguistic structures, a series of modifiers and supplementary elements. Based on these features, English long sentences can be classified into three types: Long sentences with coordinative/parallel elements, long sentences with subordinate and modified elements and long sentences with supplementary elements. Long sentences can fully express feelings and thoroughly explain the theory. The report will analyze the translation of English long sentences according to their features in respect of four translation techniques: follow the original order, invert the original order, rearrange the sentence order and split a long sentence into shorter parts or sentences.Through these analyses, the translator can better figure out the complicated sentence structures of and the logical relations among several clauses in the English long sentences, which can enable the translator to be free from the limitations of the original sentences‘ structures and make translations more conform to the Chinese expressing habits.