English-Chinese Translation Strategies For Non-Finite Verbs In Buddhist Texts

Why Buddhism Is True is the work of Robert Wright,an American science author and evolutionary psychologist at Princeton University.The book published in the United States in August 2017.This practice report is based on the translation practice of the first four chapters of the book Why Buddhism Is True,they are: the first chapter Noting the Red Bill,the second chapter Paradoxes of Meditation,the third chapter When are Feelings Illusions and the fourth chapter Bliss,Ecstasy,and More Important Reasons to Meditate.In his book,Wright proposes a system different from that of the traditional Chinese Buddhism.He negates the factors of “supernatural” such as six cycles of reincarnation,karma and avatar,and so on,and focuses only on science and philosophy about meditation and consciousness.Wright himself took part in meditation training,introduced meditation to the reader with his own true feelings,and then tested some of the Buddhist arguments from the ideas of modern science.The book is well-structured,well-founded and well-written.However,as a Buddhist text,it inherently owns some obscure parts,which inevitably produced some challenges in the process of translation.The hardest part for the writer is the translation of non-finite verbs.This paper summarizes the difficulties of non-finite verbs in Buddhist texts translation and offer some English-Chinese translation strategies and solutions correspondingly.This report contains five chapters.The first chapter presents the task description in a nutshell,including the background of the task,the meaning of the task and the content of the task.The second chapter narrates the procedure of the task,elaborating the preparation of translation,the process of translation and the revision of translation.The third chapter demonstrates some problems of non-finite verbs in translation of Why Buddhism Is True,which lists four major problems of the non-finite verb in the translation through some concrete examples,including: misarrangement of word orders,rigid application of parts of speech,mechanical conversion of voices andinappropriate expression of semantic meaning.The fourth chapter shows the corresponding translation strategies to the problems put forward in the previous chapter,and they are: proper adjustment of word orders,flexible conversion of part of speech,tactful use of voices and moderate addition of contents respectively.The fifth chapter sums up the whole report,and outlines a series of strategies to solve the translation problem of non-predicate verbs through personal practice,and provides some insights into translation.