C-E Translation Report On Business Arts Of Wenzhou(Excerpt)

This report is constructed upon the C-E translation of the book Business Arts of Wenzhou,the target readers of which are those intending to take for reference or interested in Wenzhou business modes.The translation is conducive to better understanding of today’s China for the rest of the world.This book is characterized by a considerate number of shi-construction,ba-construction and de-construction,collectively termed marked causative sentences in Chinese,which are frequently used to indicate the initiative and motivation of Wenzhou entrepreneurs.Structural constraint is the translation difficulty derived from the causative structure in these constructions due to mother tongue transfer,which constrains the thinking mode of the translator who is likely to translate the causative structure literally in the first time.Therefore,the translated text may not be so smooth or proper as the source text.Specifically,the translation difficulties in this report are: 1)expression monotony in TT due to structural constraint in shi-construction;2)semantic inappropriateness in TT due to structural constraint in ba-construction;3)causativity redundancy in TT due to structural constraint in de-construction.Peter Newmark’s Communicative Translation Theory inspires the translator “to attempt to produce on its readers an effect as close as possible to that obtained on the readers of the original”.To achieve this,the translator is entitled to reasonably adjusting the structure,even correcting the mistakes of the source text,so as to avoid impropriety in meaning,expression,logic,etc.In light of this,flexible translation is required,which is to break the structural constraint of those constructions.Thus,the theory can well shore up the tactics figured out in this report to tackle such a translation difficulty as structural constraint in the three causative sentences.There are a total of six tactics: 1)subject switch and verb replacement for expression monotony in TT of shi-construction;2)conversion and perspective shift for semantic inappropriateness in TT of ba-construction;3)free translation and omission for causativity redundancy in TT of de-construction.Hopefully,this report is looking forward to making its minute yet practical contributions to the flexible translation of marked causative sentences in Chinese like shi-construction,ba-construction and de-construction,freeing them from the structural constraint of causativity,as well as laying for future reference.