On The Rationale Of Clause As A Basic Unit In English-Chinese Translation

Languages in the world belong to different families,of which English is a member of the Indo-European family while Chinese of the Sino-Tibetan one.There exist considerable differences in the syntactic structure between the two languages.Traditional translation theories,such as Yan Fu’s triad of “faithfulness”,“expressiveness” and “elegance”,Qian Zhongshu’s “sublimation theory”,Eugene Nida’s “equivalence” and so on,have been playing a considerable role in translating to varying degrees.However,due to their universality and adaptability,these theories may fall short of the target of playing a desirable guiding role when it comes to the translating between two specific languages.Just as Lü Shuxiang,a giant translator and currently a linguist,once emphasized that translators and theorists should attach importance to a linguistic comparison in the literary translation: Translation practice needs the guidance from not only such macro theories as previously mentioned,but also the micro theories which grow out of the contrast between a specific pair of languages.Guided by the three steps(analysis-transfer-restructuring)in Eugene Nida’s back-transformation theory,based on the data from the classic novel Ethan Frome by the American novelist Edith Wharton and its Chinese version by Lü Shuxiang,this thesis aims at exploring the possibility of combining science with art and justifying that making shifts on the level of clause is the only way to that goal.Moreover,along with the main source of data as mentioned above,the thesis also picks out some examples from another two Chinese versions(one by Wang Zhenguo and the other by You Baile & Bi Weifu)for occasional contrasts.Instead of evaluating between different versions the gains and losses,strengths and weaknesses,this thesis only aims at reinforcing the idea that the translator’s different choices of translation units may affect the overall effect of translation.As the thesis concerns a research on the text translation,the author will mainly adopt a qualitative research.To be specific,the specific research methods the author employs includes: case studies,comparative analyses,induction and so on.The research focuses on pursuing the answers to the three questions.Firstly,judging from Ethan Frome and its Chinese version by L ü Shuxiang,what are the similarities and differences in deep structure and surface structure between English and Chinese clauses? Secondly,judging from Lü’s version,how does a clause work as the basic unit of transfer in English-Chinese translation? Lastly,by extension from Lü Shuxiang’s version,how does the translator successfully realize the unity of science and art by making shifts on the level of clauses in the rendition of a literary text?The thesis comes to the following conclusion.First,as the most dynamic and also the most operative unit of communication,a clause does possess the rationale to be treated as the basic unit of translation in the E-C translation practice.However,English and Chinese clauses differ in their surface structures.The former may present themselves in both explicit and implicit SVO structures.In contrast,the latter always take an explicit SVO structure.Second,as the case study of Lü’s version shows,the presupposition that the clause is the basic unit of translation obviously holds water.According to Nida’s back-transformation theory,the process of translating goes to this effect: In analysis,the translator penetrates the surface structure of the source language and traces back the simplest and semantically clearest kernels in the deep structure;in transfer,the translator transfers the kernels from the source language into the target language;in restructuring,by following the target language conventions,the translator re-organizes the kernels and turns them into faithful and smooth versions by means of re-ordering and necessary additions and omissions.Third,in translation shifts,due to the fact the choice of appropriate units of shift is also crucial,the transfer between the source and target languages must be carried out on the level of the clause,which is the only to ensure the perfect combination of science and art in translation.Static and uncommunicative,morphemes,words and phrases are not worthy of being treated as basic units of translation;dynamic and communicative,sentence and text are not ideal basic units of translation,either,for they are too big to be operative.Through the test in this thesis,clause has proven to be the only worthy basic unit of translation.To sum up,through the theoretical exploration in this thesis,the author hopes to shed light on the translation practice,especially literary translation,in the days to come,and thus effectively helps the translator strike a happy medium between science and art.