A Report On The Translation Of Long Sentences In Chemical Patent English Specifications Under The Guidance Of Back-transformation Theory

With the acceleration of globalization,exchanges of science and technology are gaining an increasing momentum between the Chinese enterprises and institutions and their counterparts in other countries.As a specialized publication of new technology,patent documents record a variety of new inventions and technological achievements,which generates great demand on the translation of patent specifications for the purpose of promoting sci-tech exchanges.The translation of long sentences has long been important yet difficult in the process of translating sci-tech texts since they are characterized by the mixture of the use of terminologies,nominalization,non-predicate verb structures,attributive clauses and so on,which constitutes the complex long sentences.The complexity challenges translators who are required to meet criteria necessary for high-quality translations.Such criteria as preciseness,objectiveness and readability propel a translator to pay more attention to the quality of translation.This paper aims to study the translation of long English sentences in chemical patent specifications through Nida's Back-transformation theory.This elaborates the "three-stage process of translation" which includes analysis,transfer and restructuring.Analysis stresses meanings of words and combination of words,grammatical relationships among sentences and kernel sentences;transfer emphasizes the translation of kernel sentences into the target language;restructuring focuses on organizing the transferred kernel sentences according to the standard of the target language.Following the three stages,the author firstly made an analysis of the important information in long sentences,then listed kernel sentences with such information and classified the kernel sentences into different groups.After that,the resulting kernel sentences were transformed into the deep structure of the target language in accordance with the sense group of sentences.Finally,the author restructured these incoherent deep structures following the rules of Chinese writing.Guided by Nida's back-transformation theory,mainly the "three-stage process of translation",the author hopes to avoid mistranslation to the utmost so as to improve the quality of translation.