An Interpretation Of Chinese Paratactic Sentences And Their Translation

The Chinese paratactic sentence(CPS),a type of complex sentence unique to the Chinese language,was initially conceptualized by Lv Shuxiang.Normally,the CPS consists of a series of clauses,which,with one clause pushing forward another,reminds one of the running water or floating clouds.The CPS takes up a high percentage in Chinese sentence patterns.An in-depth study of the CPS is both theoretically and practically significant.That is because: First,the deepened understanding of the CPS in the academic circles may help improve the quality of Chinese-foreign language translation,which,in turn may promote the translation of Chinese classical works;second,the deepened understanding of the CPS is also conducive to international Chinese teaching and China-West cultural exchanges.The data in the thesis comes from the Chinese classical novel The Scholars and its English version by Yang Hsien-yi and his English-born wife Gladys Yang.In the part of interpreting the CPS,the thesis mainly adopts the methods of induction and exemplification to tackle the core issue culturally,semantically and syntactically.In expounding the translation of the CPS,the thesis,guided by the three steps(analysis,transfer and restructuring)in Eugene Nida's back-transformation theory,mainly adopts a comparative analysis to investigate how a CPS is transformed into its English version in the three steps.With regard to the guiding theories,the thesis adopts the three-plane theory to interpret the mechanism of CPS,using typical sentence moulds to elucidate the transformation of semantic relations on the deep level into syntactic forms on the surface level;in tackling the translation of the CPS,the thesis adopts the three steps in Eugene Nida's back-transformation theory to illustrate the transformation of parataxis into hypotaxis.Through the analysis in the research,the thesis comes to the following conclusion: First,the CPS,a pattern of complex sentence in Chinese,is typical of the Chinese language.Culturally,it reflects Chinese people's ways of thinking,which specifically includes: savvy thinking,image thinking,holistic thinking and subject consciousness;syntactically,the CPS consists of several clauses and usually there are few or no connectives between one clause and another,showing apparent features of parataxis;semantically,the types of semantic relationships within the CPS can also be transformed into sentence moulds and there are intrinsic(tangible or intangible)cohesive devices between one clause and another to ensure its naturalness and smoothness.Second,it is on the basis of the differences between parataxis and hypotaxis and through the three steps(analysis,transfer and restructuring)in Eugene Nida's back-transformation theory that the translating of the CPS is carried out.The process of translating can be specified as follows: In analysis,by penetrating its paratactic surface,the translator divides up the CPS to trace out the possible kernels on the deep level;in transfer,the kernels are transformed into English on the deep level;in restructuring,the translator turns them into surface-level English sentences by rearranging and readjusting them according to hypotactic features uniquely possessed by English sentence patterns.In a word,the translating of the CPS,which goes through Eugene Nida's three steps,is a transformation from paratactic syntax to hypotactic syntax.