On Translating Attributive Clauses In Informative Texts

Climate change has been a heated topic which causes rising anxiety and confusion among the public. Most people hold that human beings are to blame for the climate change and global warming. However, Roy W. Spencer, author of Climate Confusion: How Global Warming Hysteria Leads to Bad Science, Pandering Politicians and Misguided Policies That Hurt the Poor, points out that no scientific papers offer reliable evidence to prove that human activity brings a danger for the climate. His researches on climate change have proved that Mother Nature- not manmade factorsis largely responsible for any climate change. He exposes the motivation behind the global warming threat hysteria from the perspectives of science, media, economics, politics and religion. Climate Confusion is enlightening and insightful which conveys abundant information in a plain language. It provides a different perspective for people to have a full understanding of the reasons and truths behind global warming.The translation of this book is accomplished by the five students of the project team under the guide of the supervisor. The author of this report is mainly responsible for the translation of Chapter One and Chapter Two. One of the most prominent language features of this book is the excellent employment of attributive clauses, which, in other side, becomes a great obstacle in the translation process. Different positions of attributives between Chinese and English together with the frequent employment of multiple attributive clauses pose great challenges for the translator. The most noteworthy part in this translation practice lies in the perception that in translating attributive clauses, the translator should not only analyze and understand the logical structure of the sentence, but also consider the expression differences at the syntactic level between Chinese and English so as to ensure the accuracy and fluency of the translation.In this report, the translator will first introduce the definition and classification of attributive clauses, summarize the use frequency of attributive clauses in the original text and discuss the features of these attributive clauses. Then the translator will mainly talk about the main problems in translating attributive clauses and the translating methods that have been applied, namely translating into a pre-modifier, translating into a coordinate clause, translating into an independent sentence and translating into an adverbial clause. Through the detailed study on the translation of attributive clauses, the translator has a better understanding of the features and translating methods of attributive clauses. It is expected that the study of attributive clauses in this report can bring some suggestions and insights for both the author and readers.