The Translation For Inanimate-Subject Sentences In CONTRACT FOR THE DESIGN AND CONSTRUCTION OF THE HOTEL AND CASINO

Inanimate-subject sentences are sentences with inanimate nouns as subjects. While the predicates of which are usually animate verbs expressing specific behaviors or actions, inanimate-subject sentences are a kind of mapping from object thinking approach of English speaking countries to their language and stand in a sharp contrast to animate-subject sentences in Chinese, which stress subjective thinking approach. Therefore, they are not only a fairly significant English sentence structure but a rather difficult point in English-Chinese translation as well. This report is based on CONTRACT FOR THE DESIGN AND CONSTRUCTION OF THE HOTEL AND CASINO, which contains typical inanimate-subject sentences in English construction contracts, and mainly explores the translation methods of inanimate-subject sentences in CONTRACT FOR THE DESIGN AND CONSTRUCTION OF THE HOTEL AND CASINO.There are two reasons for the existence of inanimate-subject sentences. First, in terms of its linguistic features, English favors hypotaxis to make the structures and forms logical, fair and objective. Construction contract English is featured with hypotaxis sentences, therefore, inanimate-subject sentences are frequently used in it; Second, English stands out for its impersonal style and objective consciousness. inanimate-subject sentences, with its objective characteristics, serves as the main structure in well structured and clear stated construction contract English. inanimate-subject sentences. translation methods of inanimate-subject sentences include inversion, syntactic linearity, conversion and so on. The author discusses with specific examples four translation methods of inanimate-subject sentences in the CONTRACT FOR THE DESIGN AND CONSTRUCTION OF THE HOTEL AND CASINO, which are inversion, syntactic linearity, conversion and division.