Translation Of Main-Subordinate Complex Sentences From The Perspective Of Hypotaxis And Parataxis

When people are comparing the English language and the Chinese language,hypotaxis and parataxis has always been a pair of important concepts,whether in the field of translation or in the field of linguistics.It is widely accepted that the English language features hypotaxis and the Chinese language features parataxis.The existence of various main-subordinate complex sentences in English is a concrete manifestation of hypotaxis.Generally speaking,main-subordinate complex sentences in English are long,informative and complicated in grammar,which adds to the difficulty of translating English complex sentences into normative and fluent Chinese sentences.In addition to this,Chinese features parataxis,which means Chinese sentences that people translate into from English main-subordinate complex sentences are often differently organized from the original English sentences,although they convey the same information.Consequently,it is necessary to discuss hypotaxis and parataxis systematically,and how people could apply the concepts to the translation between English and Chinese especially that of main-subordinate complex sentences.The report consists of four chapters.Chapter One is a brief introduction to the translation project,including text analysis and translation process.The book Coffee: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Coffee is a short book introducing coffee in English,which comprises about 8,000 words in total.In addition to the preface and the conclusion,there are four other chapters in this book.Although the writer has not written at considerable length,the book covers almost everything about coffee.There are all types of main-subordinate complex sentences in this book,and comparatively,the sentences are not complicated and they are appropriate to illustrate how to translate main-subordinate complex sentences from the perspective of hypotaxis and parataxis.Chapter Two discusses hypotaxis and parataxis systematically,presenting the representative statements of definitions of hypotaxis and parataxis,and summarizing the concrete manifestations of hypotaxis in English and parataxis in Chinese.The inflection,the subject-predicate structure and the rightward extending mode are all concrete manifestations of hypotaxis in English.The topic-description structure,the leftward extending mode and the order of clauses in accordance with time sequence law and logical law are all concrete manifestations of parataxis in Chinese.And the characteristics of main-subordinate complex sentences in English are also discussed in this chapter.Chapter Three illustrates how to analyze the English main-subordinate complex sentences from the perspective of hypotaxis and how to translate the sentences into Chinese from the perspective of parataxis,taking the sentences in Coffee: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Coffee as examples.Noun clauses can be subdivided into subject clauses,predicative clauses,object clauses and appositive clauses.This chapter gives illustrations on how to translate these four types of noun clauses.Attributive clauses can be subdivided into restrictive attributive clauses and non-restrictive attributive clauses.Four ways to translate restrictive attributive clauses are summarized,such as in Chinese sentences,putting the clause in front of the antecedent,combining the antecedent with the clause into a clause by omitting the formal but meaningless words in the main clause,translating the clause into a separate clause behind the antecedent and translating the clause as an adverbial clause.The translation of adverbial clauses is discussed in three aspects.The first aspect is about whether the conjunction should be omitted or not,which depends on the expression of the meaning of the clause and the organization of the Chinese sentence.The second aspect is about whether the original order of the main clause and the adverbial clause conforms to the time sequence law.If the answer is “Yes”,there is no need to change their order.If the answer is “No”,we need to do some changes to make the order of clauses conform to the time sequence law unless there are other special requests.The third aspect is about whether the original order of the main clause and the adverbial clause conforms to the logical law.Chapter Four comes to a conclusion,summing up some experiences and deficiencies.A systematical analysis to the translation of main-subordinate complex sentences from the perspective of hypotaxis and parataxis with examples in Coffee: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Coffee has been conducted.However,hypotaxis and parataxis at the discourse level and the corresponding translation strategies are not mentioned in this report.There is still room for improvement of the translation quality.