A Report On The Chinese Translation Of Prepositions And Prepositional Phrases In Maritime Accident Reports

Prepositions are frequently used in maritime accident reports,and are one of the most frequently used parts of speech in English with strong collocation ability.Therefore,prepositions and prepositional phrases should be handled flexibly according to the context and word collocation in order to conform to the expression habits of Chinese and make the Chinese translation coherent and intelligible.The paper firstly analyses the characteristics and importance of the prepositions and prepositional phrases in the Chinese and English language.Guided by Skopos theory and in accordance with the characteristics of prepositions in the Chinese and English language systems,the paper analyzes some typical prepositions in maritime accident reports such as "of,in,for" with examples.For specific problems,the paper selects various translation methods,mainly adopting four translation methods,conversion,division,omission and negation translation.Firstly,conversion includes four forms,translating prepositions and prepositions phrases into verbs,adjectives,adverbs and conjunctions.Some prepositions with verbal meaning can be transformed into verbs;prepositions that modify finite nouns can be transformed into adjectives;some prepositions which indicate position and range can be transformed into adverbs in English;and some prepositions can be transformed into conjunctions when sentences express reasons,conditions and concomitant conditions.What's more,division can be used by the sentences when prepositions guide concessions,conditions and other adverbial clauses.Besides,omission is used to make sentences concise and clear by using some static prepositions to express time and place in English.Last but not least,there are some prepositions in the sentence which originally express the negative meaning.When the sentence still expresses the meaning of negation,the method of negation translation can be used.By analyzing the translation of prepositions and prepositional phrases in maritime texts,the paper provides a reference for the study of prepositions and prepositional phrases and is of practical significance to maritime text translation ability.