On Translating English Adjectives:A Translation Report Of Across The Open Field (Chapter Three)

Based on the translation of Across the Open Field(Chapter Three)from English to Chinese,this report aims to give a detailed description of the whole translation process and translation methods.Across the Open Field,a collection of essays,written by the American landscape architecture Laurie Olin,describes the beautiful and fascinating landscape of England with evocative language and exquisite line drawings.During the translation process,the translator(the author)finds that the source text is characterized with abundant adjectives which are very tricky to deal with.Thus,in this report the author focuses on what efficient translation methods can be used to translate the English adjectives into Chinese.As is known to us all,adjectives play a pivotal role in shaping figures and foiling atmosphere in English and American literature.With complexity of adjectives in classification and usage,the translation of English adjectives poses a great challenge to the translator.In the whole translation process,the author discovers that two major types of adjectives,namely attributive adjectives and predicative adjectives,are frequently used in the source text.Taking the types of adjectives into consideration,the translator mainly explores five methods to translate the English adjectives into Chinese: the first one is the “adoption of ‘...?' structure in Chinese ”;the second one is the “adoption of phrases or short sentences”;the third one is the “adoption of four-character structure”;the fourth is the “addition of adverbs” and the last one is the“adoption of ‘subject + predicate' structure”.As attributive adjectives are more complicated than the predicative adjectives in the source text,the first four methods are employed to render attributive adjectives and the last one is used to render predicative adjectives.Among the five ways,special attention needs to be attached to the “adoption of phrases or short sentences” when the logic semantic orientation of attributive adjectives deviates from their grammatically modified nouns.Based on the analysis illustrated by typical examples,the author in the end sums up the ways torender English adjectives into Chinese with a view to shedding light on the translation of English adjectives.