| English and Chinese have different syntactic rules and features.Generally,English is a hypotactic language in that semantically related phrases,clauses,constructions,etc.are placed in a series using explicit connectives;Chinese,on the other hand,is basically a paratactic language in that semantically related phrases,clauses,constructions,etc.are often placed in a series without using explicit connectives.Previous studies have made a lot of achievements in the characterization of the features of hypotaxis and parataxis as well as the differences between English and Chinese sentences in terms of hypotaxis and parataxis,but have not provided a systematic method that could be relied on to render hypotactic English sentences into idiomatic Chinese.The present study was made with the intention of identifying an effective way of rendering hypotactic English sentences into Chinese to ensure both correct and natural transfer of the original meaning.Twelve English sentences with typical hypotactic features were collected from literary works and technical texts for case analysis.The collected sentences were divided into two groups.Sentences of the first group were translated by other translators,with every sentence having two translation versions.Sentences of the other group were translated by the author following the translation processes in Nida's model.In case studies,the author first analyzed the hypotactic sentences translated into Chinese by others.After analyzing the original meaning following Nida's analytical method,the author compared the translations and identified some difficulties in translating hypotactic sentences.Then the author applied Nida's model in translating the hypotactic English sentences collected from the author's own translation practices to test if this model could be used to effectively translate hypotactic English sentences into idiomatic Chinese.Major findings of case studies are as follows:1.In E-C translation,rigidly following the surface syntactic structures of the original may result in inaccurate translations or "translationese".Reducing the surface structures to kernels can help a translator to structure target sentences based on a clear understanding of the original meaning,thereby avoiding mechanical literal rendering.2.In translating hypotactic English sentences,identifying clearly the functional role(object,event,abstract,and relational)of a lexical item can help a translator to better appreciate the meaning under the superficial forms and to represent the original meaning naturally in Chinese.3.The hypotactic feature of the English syntax makes it possible to construct a sentence embedded with various levels of subordinate structures.Reducing such sentences into kernels can help a translator make explicit the semantic relations between different structures of a sentence,hence making it easier for a translator to represent the original meaning in target structures.The findings indicate that by following the translation processes in Nida's model,a translator can grasp the meanings underlying the surface structures more accurately and represent the meanings naturally in accordance with the syntactic rules and features of the target language.Based on these findings,the author concludes that Nida's model of translation process can help effectively with the rendition of hypotactic English sentences into idiomatic Chinese.The present study is meaningful in that it provides some practical help to translators in their E-C translation practice.In addition,pedagogically,it may shed some light on the translation method teaching in translation-related classes.However,as the cases collected for analysis in this study are limited in number and are scattered in different text genres,the conclusions reached for the study might not be as persuasive as the author expects.The author suggests that future researchers make efforts to improve the way by which data are collected and focus on specific text types for in-depth case analysis. |
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