Division And Reconstruction Of Long Sentences:A Practice Report On English-Chinese Translation Of New Frontiers In Social Innovation Research

The translation of long sentences has been a research hotspot for translators.Current researches mainly focus on the translation of long sentences in scientific and medical texts,rarely involving that of social science texts.When people’s living standard gets improved,China is gradually exploring social innovation,that is,to achieve social stability and prosperity through innovation in business,marketing,politics,health care and other fields.The research on social innovation in foreign countries is earlier,and their academic achievements in this area are fruitful.Learning from their advanced theories,we need to concentrate on the translation of social science texts.So,this paper chooses the social science book New Frontiers In Social Innovation Research as translation text,which is written by Alex Nicholls,Julie Simon and Madeleine Gabriel and published in 2015.The long and complex sentence is a feature of this text,and a large number of long sentences bring difficulties to translation.Due to flexibility of English sentence patterns and differences of culture and thinking between Chinese and English,literal translation is not feasible.So we should divide long sentence on the basis of its structure,and reconstructure it on the basis of meaning to correspond with Chinese expression habit.Then the translation becomes appropriate and smooth so that readers can understand.According to translation practice,this paper concludes translation problems as too many modifiers and clauses and complex sentence structure,and solutions as division of phrases,clauses and structure and reconstruction of word order and sentence pattern,hoping to provide some enlightenment to the translation of long sentences in social science text.