On Dealing With Dashes A Report On Translating The Second Mountain: The Quest For A Moral Life (Excerpts)

This report is based on the translation of excerpts(From chapter V to conclusion part)of the book The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life written by David Brooks.The book introduces two mountains in our life.The first mountain is achievements acclaimed by hyper-individualism,and the second is a fulfilling life that abandons a self-centered mindset and seeks commitment and equality.The writer mainly talks about what factors contribute to a meaningful life,including family,a vocation,a belief and a community.Also,the writer gives both narrations and comments on introducing various aspects,offering us insightful views on how we should choose our career and companion and how we make contributions to our community.The book is of great relevance and significance.The author of this report finds that the frequencies of dashes in the translation part are high.What is more,among many sentences,each dash represents its special usage and delivers unique meanings.So it is worth exploring when it comes to comparing English and Chinese languages.Dashes are a common and special feature in written language.In Chinese texts,they are mainly used for explanation,supplementary elaborations,comparison,introductions and so on.Proper uses of dashes can do good to language expression.In English texts,dashes bear similar functions with that in Chinese.However,in English-Chinese translations,keeping the dashes in the target language sometimes may result in misunderstandings about the text for the readers and meanings may be inconsistent with expression in the Chinese language.This report classifies sentences that include dashes in the translation part.After further explorations of definition,usages and functions of dashes in Chinese and English languages,the author finds the usages of dashes in the translation part are separation,addition and introduction.Also,the author analyzes them from the perspectives of cohesion function in prosody,grammar,vocabulary and conjunction and goes deeper into several translation methods of dashes,namely zero-transformation and conversion.Finally,the author comes to realize that punctuation marks bear meanings within a text and are of vital importance that we cannot ignore.