Translating English Parentheses Into Chinese

This report is based on the translation of the book Nuclear Weapons and American Grand Strategy,written by Francis J.Gavin,an American historian and expert on international relations.Developed from papers previously published,the book focuses on the role played by nuclear weapons in American foreign policy as well as the influence exerted by the weapons on some important historical events,which can facilitate understanding of the importance of nuclear weapons in the context of the present complex international environment.Among the language features of the book,an outstanding one is the abundance and diversity of parentheses.These language structures play the role of adding extra information to the sentences they are placed in but have no grammatical connections with the rest of sentences.Many parentheses in the book are themselves long and often put in long and complex sentences,which,if not translated properly,will pose challenges to reading and understanding of the book.As a result,translating these parentheses into idiomatic Chinese is of great importance for conveying the original meaning of the source text.Based on analysis of the target text and the translation techniques proposed in other studies,this report proposes five techniques including retaining the position of parentheses,embedding,putting parentheses at the beginning of sentences,putting parentheses at the end of sentences and recasting.Each technique is introduced with some typical examples to justify the application of the technique,the use of which depends on the extent to which parentheses interrupt sentences and also on the degree to which the way the information presented in the source text differs from the linguistic habits of Chinese readers.As the case study of the report is based on translation of two chapters from the original text,this report is expected to contribute to further and more comprehensive study on English parentheses translation.