Translating Dashes In Social Science Text From English To Chinese

Since the First World War,international relations theory as an academic discipline has come to spawn and sweep around the world.Afterwards,the book International Relations Theory – A Critical Introduction,taking a different and thought-provoking approach,makes the stories about international politics appear to be true through relying on IR myths.The selected text falls under the purview of social science text,with a precise diction and solemn language,so translators are bound to go to some length to work with translation.Apart from solemn and elegant words,additionally,first-rate translations of this type require the elaborate selection of punctuation.Dozens of dashes,utilized in the last two chapters of the book on which this translation practice report is based,cause great obstacles for the translator to understand and render the original text.Both Chinese and English dashes though serve the function of semantic cohesion,provided that translators tend to follow the paradigm of the original text too blindly in interjecting punctuation,it will make the translation awkward and obscure.According to the logical semantic relations in Halliday’s An Introduction to Functional Grammar,what can be manifested is that three types of expansion in the system of conjunction,namely“elaborating”,“extending” and “enhancing”,are similar to the function writers met in the use of English dashes,that is to introduce a list,to signal an amplification,or to indicate a striking shift in tone.Therefore,the author takes this as an entry point to sum up four strategies on translating them in English-Chinese social science texts,specifically substitution,splitting-off,ellipsis and retaining,hoping that it will be of great benefit to future translation studies.This report is composed of six parts.The first chapter gives a brief introduction to the research background.In the second one,the author narrates the main contents of the source text and the significance of writing this report.In the third part,the whole translation process is expounded,including the translator’s preparations for pre-translation,the difficulties and corresponding solutions during the practice.Chapter Four makes a concrete analysis and summary of the current situation of the research on cohesion theory by experts and scholars at home and abroad,and makes a meticulous comparison of the meaning of dashes in Chinese and English,demonstrating the significant instruction of cohesion theory for dealing with dashes.In the fifth part,the translator,through the concrete case,makes a classification for the functions of dashes in line with Halliday’s logico-semantic relation and summarizes four strategies for dealing with them in English-Chinese translation,namely substitution,splitting-off,ellipsis and retaining.The last one is a summary of the whole translation project,which pictures the gains and deficiencies of this translation practice.