Strategies For Translating Parenthesis From English To Chinese

The text chosen to be translated is chapter three of Grant,a biography written by the American writer Ron Chernow.There are many parentheticals in this chapter.As an inserted constituent,parenthesis interrupts the original sentence order and results in the lack of logic and explicitness,thus making both readers and translators confused.Besides,seldom have people studied the strategies for translating parenthesis in a biographical text.Therefore,in the hope of offering translators with a new insight,this report decides to study the translation strategies for parenthesis.At first,the report analyzes some journals and theses written by scholars,and then it explores the definitions,classifications,functions and translation strategies of parenthesis.Based on the characteristics of each parenthetical clause and the translation strategies put forward by Xu Mingwu and Yang Hong and Zheng Shengtao,this report examines its semantic meanings and function in the host sentences,employing four translation strategies,which are embedding,recasting,addition and translating parenthesis with brackets.By doing this translation project,this report finds that when translating parenthesis in a biographical text,the translator should make sure that the translation is not only concise but also retains a literary flavor.Besides,only by understanding the semantic and grammatical relationship between parenthetical sequence and its host,can the translator choose a proper translation strategy for translating parenthesis.