A Report On The Syntactic Comparison And Translation Of Long Sentences In Academic Texts

This current text titled The Rhetoric of History,published in the sixth volume of International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences(2~ndd ed.)in 2008,is an extension and revision of the original journal article with the same title published in the first issue of volume 6 of the journal History and Theory in 1967.The text covers the core issues of historiography like postmodernism,historical narrative and the modes of historical explanation and contains enormous long sentences,which renders the rigorous logic and the professional attitude of the original writer.For the complexity of English long sentence and the great challenge it poses to the translation,it is considered as the focus of the study.In the translation report,the author makes a comprehensive analysis of the linguistic features of the source text.Considering the features of academic texts and difficulties of long sentence translation,the author selects the functional equivalence theory as the guiding theory.Under the guidance of the theory,the author discusses the syntactic differences between English and Chinese and adopts four strategies,namely,“linear translation,”“variable order translation,”“division”and“reconstruction,”to specifically analyze how to solve the translation problem of English long sentences.At the same time,a comparative analysis of the translation of overlapping parts of the two version of the source text is conducted.Based on the case analysis,the conclusion can be drawn that combining syntactic divergences between English and Chinese,the flexible translation strategies can provide an effective way to solve the translation problems of academic texts marked by long sentences and large amount of information and improve the quality of academic translation under the guidance of functional equivalence theory.By summarizing the strategies of long sentence translation and potential problems in academic translation,the author aims to provide references for further study,thus achieving the purpose of academic communication.