Translation Of Attributive Clauses In English Academic Writings

This translation material contains Chapter 12 and Chapter 13 of a masterpiece in linguistic field-- Landmarks in Linguistic Thoughts: the Western Tradition from Socrates to Saussure written by Roy Harris and Talbot J. Taylor. This book introduced the important opinions and main subjects during the development of western linguistics. The content of these two chapters which the translator has chosen are the research on the diversity of language and mental which was taken by Humboldt, and Muller on linguistic evolution. These two masters’ ideas are both independent and link to each other, which had provided precious theoretical and practical experience for those who are keen on the research of linguistic development. The translation material has strong academic nature as well as superior logical structure. Besides it contains many attributive clauses which have complex structures.Attributive clause is the clause guided by relative pronouns and adverbs. And its function is to modify a composition of main clause. In attributive clause, we use main clause to present the main action state of things, and add some relevant plots in subordinate clause. whereas the translation of attributive clause is usually considered as a difficult point. The original reason is the reflection of the different characters of mental mode on linguistic expression. This research aims at, firstly, explore some distinctive features of academic writings; secondly, classify all the attributive clauses in the material according to the relations between attributive clauses and their antecedents; thirdly, give a research on comprehensive translation strategies of restrictive attributive clauses and non-restrictive attributive clauses in academic writings. The translator has tried to dissect the attributive clauses of the translation material according to the characteristics of academic language.On the methods of translation of the attributive clauses that appear in the text, this paper has drown the following conclusion: the translator can adopt translation strategies such as front-loading, back-loading, fusion and adverbial translation. Although this paper has just approached to the translation of attributive clauses in Landmarks in Linguistic Thoughts Volume I: the Western Tradition from Socrates to Saussure, the translator still hope it can provide some references to other text in the translation of attributive clauses.