On E-C Translation Of The ''Noun+of+Noun'' Structure In Ground Penetrating Radar

The source text is excerpted from the 9th chapter of Ground Penetrating Radar^{-2nd Edition} which is published by an internationally renowned professional academic organization——the Institution of Electrical Engineers in UK.It belongs to the technical text.The chapter describes some of the civil engineering applications of GPR.The“Noun+of+Noun?structure is widely used in this technical text representing abundant and intricate relationships,which is a difficult point in translation.Therefore,this thesis chooses the?Noun+of+Noun?structure to analyze.The primary aim of the translation of this scientific text is to convey the information of the original text to the receptors accurately.Thus,Nida‘s back-transformation theory is selected to analyze the translation.In this theory,the translator should analyze the surface structure of the source language to find kernel sentence during the translation.Then,the kernel sentence of the source language should be transferred into the kernel sentence of the target language.The surface structure of the target language should be restructured according to the characteristics of the target language.To identify the basic structure of the words in the kernel sentence,Nida puts forward four functional classes:object,event,abstract and relation from the semantic point of view.According to the semantic relationship between parts connected by?of?and Nida‘s four semantic classes,this thesis divides the?Noun+of+Noun?structure into four major categories:object-abstract category,abstract-object category,event-object category and object-object category.Under the guidance of back-transformation theory,this thesis reveals the translation strategies of the?Noun+of+Noun?structure as follows:the first is that some?Noun+of+Noun?structures can be translated into?de?structure,which?de?cannot be omitted in translation.Two conditions need to be considered.When the noun following?of?is the head word,the translated text can be?N1 de N2?.When the noun prior to?of?is the head word,the translated text should be?N2 de N1?.And this strategy is applied in abstract-object category,some of object-abstract categories and some of object-object categories.The second strategy is to omit?de?structures.It includes word-class shift,set collocation translation and zero translation.Word-class shift means that noun can be shifted into verb in Chinese.Set collocation translation is to translate the meaning of phrase in Chinese idiomatic expression.Zero translation means that it is necessary to omit?de?structure purposely in order to get more idiomatic Chinese in the absence of ambiguity.The second strategy is suitable for event-object type and some of object-object categories.The third strategy is translating into other expressions which often refer to?wei?in Chinese.This strategy is used in some object-abstract type.Hence,translator requires to analyze the sematic relationship between the constituent parts connected by?of?to produce an adequate rendering for the?Noun+of+Noun?structure.And the translator needs to employ suitable translation strategies accordingly.In this way,the translated text is more fluent and idiomatic.The characteristic of technical text can be reflected.Although this thesis emphasizes the?Noun+of+Noun?structure,it can offer some inspiration toward studies on other?of?structure,English prepositions and their translation.