On The Chinese Translation Of Nominalization In English Academic Text From The Perspective Of Communicative Translation

Nominalization is frequently used in English and is one of the most remarkable features of written English texts.Nominalization tends to make the expression more concise,the narrative more appropriate,and the writing more natural,meanwhile it helps to express the abstract thoughts and complex emotions.According to A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics,nominalization is “the process of forming nouns from other parts of speech,or the process of forming a noun phrase from a clause”(Crystal,2011).Many linguists claim that English is primarily a “nominalizing” language.They argue that by far the most flexible and creative linguistic device available to the speaker of English is the system of rules which enables us to transform non-nominal constituents(and even entire sentences)into nominal ones.In this translation report the author selects an English academic paper about childhood autism,and in the source text there are a large number of nominalization phenomena.The readers of the target text are mainly Chinese researchers in medical circle.In order to make the target text being more easily accepted by target language readers,it is necessary to break through the form of the original text and adjust the original text according to the characteristics of the target language and the readers' thinking mode and reading habit.Therefore,Newmark's communicative translation is chosen as the theoretical basis of the report.Communicative translation is proposed by Newmark on the basis of a great deal of translation practice.It recognizes the importance of catering for the target text readers' needs,and tries to create “the effect produced for the target reader as close as possible to the original reader.”Many linguists have explained nominalization from their own research field,but nominalization is mainly reflected at the lexical level.In this translation report,the author mainly discusses the Chinese translation of English nominalization from three aspects: nouns deriving from verbs,nouns deriving from adjectives,and simple or complex noun phrases with different modifiers.According to their compositions and sources,they are converted into verbs,adjectives or translated into subject-predicate structures,verb-object structures and clauses.At the same time,the author hopes that the analysis of English nominalization in this translation report can provide some help for future translation practice.