A Report On The Translation Of Short Modifiers In English Patents From The Perspective Of Newmark’s Communicative Translation Theory

Science and technology translation,as an important branch of translation activities,has a growing demand.At the same time,the study of its texts and translation strategies has gradually deepened.The texts involved in the translation of science and technology usually have textual features such as many word meanings,many long sentences,many passive sentences,many word formations,many non-predicative verbs,and strong professionalism.Patent literature,as a text that has received increasing attention in recent years,covers a wide range of fields and contains a lot of important information.Therefore,the study of its translation method has gradually attracted people’s attention.Patent literature,as an important branch of science and technology English,broadly includes patent applicant’s invention specification,competent authorities’ handling of patent applications and patent litigation and other documents,as well as secondary information compiled based on these original documents;narrowly refers only to the invention specification.Patent documents combine the characteristics of scientific texts and legal texts.Both English patents and Chinese patents are extremely professional and logical.In the English patent document,due to its specific textual requirements,for example,each claim can only consist of one sentence,the modifiers in noun structures in long sentences are usually more.Therefore,the translation of the modifiers should be particularly noticed in E/C translation.This paper is based on the translation of the patent Vehicle Exhaust Systems,and the concept ofcommunicative translation which was proposed by Peter Newmarkin Approaches to Translation.He proposed semantic translation and communicati-ve translation,in which communicative translation refers to the method through which focusing on readers,the translator attempts to produce the same effect on the target language readers as was produced by the original on the source language readers.Communicative translation focuses on the transmission of information and is therefore often used to process informative texts,to which the patent literature belongs.Modifiers in both English and Chinese can be classified as attributive and adverbial.This article discusses word and phrase modifiers which are called together as short modifiers.The differences between English short modifiersand Chinese ones are mainly in their compositions and positions,for example,some prepositional phrase structures in English,verbs present participles,verb past participles and verb infinitives,etc.,have no correspondence in Chinese;word and phrase modifiers in Chinese are both usually prepended,while phrase modifiers in English are often placed after the central word.The purpose of this paper is to analyze the similarities and differences in the compositions and positions of short modifiers in English and Chinese patents,and analyzes how to adopt the strategies of flexible adjustment of part of speech and sequences during E/C translation of patents in order to make the target text not only conform to Chinese written rules,but also maintain its logical rigor.