Translation Of Chinese Long Sentences In “Guests Are Coming”

There are a large number of long sentences in Chinese literary works. The structures of such sentences are generally very complex with the comprehensive use of diverse ingredients, which is quite different from the structures of English long sentences. Such differences would lead to a lot of difficulties in translation practice. The difficulties in translating Chinese long sentences lie not only in understanding but also in expressing, and so how to translate Chinese long sentences well is an important issue that requires a careful study. This thesis, based on an analysis of the author’s self-translation of Guests Are Coming, explores the syntactic differences between English and Chinese first, and some methods for translating Chinese long sentences are suggested.In the research, the author finds that English and Chinese sentence structures are different both in strategy for making sentences as well as word order and sentence order. First, since English is a hypotactic language, while structuring a sentence, attention is usually paid to grammar and cohesive ties in sentence. Whereas the paratactic feature requires that a Chinese sentence should be structured in the logic order of contents included in it, and thus sentence members are usually arranged in the order of the logic of the meaning units in it. Second, the structure of a long English sentence is usually compared to a grapevine with words having its own branch which is known as subordinate clause while words in a long Chinese sentence are arranged in the order of logical relations with no branches.On the Basis of this, the author finds that the following methods can be used in translating long Chinese sentences: plain sequence, backward sequence, embedding, phrasing method, restructuring, and synthetic use of various methods. When the content level of a long English sentence agrees with that of Chinese, the method of plain sequence can be used. When the word order of a long Chinese sentence is different from or even completely opposite to that of English, backward sequence can be adopted. When the postpositions can be placed before the headword which is in accordance with the Chinese word order, we can use embedding. When the relation between the subject or main clause in long Chinese sentence and the modifiers is not so close, we can use phrasing method. When English translation is different in form and word order from the original Chinese sentence, we can restructure all the meaning units in the translated sentence. However, when a long Chinese sentence is so complicated that no single one of the above methods works, we have to use synthetic method. Whatever method is adopted, we should observe the general principle that the translated sentence should be structured in agreement with the Chinese grammar and ways of thinking.As these methods are suggested on the basis of the author’s translation experience and in reference to the suggestions of some experienced translators, so they may be useful and practical to the translation of English long sentences into Chinese.