Parenthesis Translation In The Light Of Coherence

This is a report based on the translation of the first part of the book The Immortalists written by Chloe Benjamin.The novel has depicted four siblings? life after they have heard the date of their death from a psychic.During the translation process,the translator finds there are many parentheses in the source text.In English,parentheses are widely used to achieve structural balance of the sentence,add extra information to the former words,highlight certain parts of the sentence,or show some certain feelings of the speaker.As the position of the parenthesis is very flexible in an English sentence,it would break the normal word order in most cases.Generally speaking,there is no direct syntactic relationship between the parenthesis and the trunk of a sentence.Therefore when a parenthesis is inserted between the subject and the predicate of a sentence,the translator could not always make an idiomatic and smooth translation.Although the use of parentheses is to show the rigorous structure of English sentences,such independent structure in Chinese,which is paratactic,often causes semantic faults,and further influences the coherence and readability of the text.Due to the differences in sentence structure between Chinese and English,how to translate these parentheses so as to make the sentence more coherent in meaning,clearer in logic,and more idiomatic in expression has become the biggest challenge for the translator.Therefore,in this report,the translator first finds out all the parentheses in the original text,and then divides them into three types: attribute as parenthesis;adverbial as parenthesis;and appositive as parenthesis.Then the translator analyses the syntactic structure of the sentences,trying to find out the trunk of the sentences and the logical relationship hidden in them.Lastly,the translator analyses different ways to achieve textual coherence both in Chinese and English and then makes a relatively faithful and smooth translation.Through this translation practice,the translator deeply understands that a good translation is by no means piling up fancy phrases according to the original order,especially when parentheses have been inserted in the sentences.During the process of translating this independent structure,achieving textual coherence has become the translator?s priority.Through the analysis of parentheses translation,the translator hopes to gain some experience for future translation practice,and provide references for other translators.