| The source text of this report is the introduction part and the first chapter of A vigorous spirit of enterprise: merchants and economic development in Revolutionary Philadelphia,written by Thomas M.Doerflinger,an American writer,and historian.Published in 1986,the book serves as a social,economic,and political study of Philadelphia merchants,and presents both the spiritual and material life of merchants.In general,Doerflinger examines the Philadelphia merchant community from three perspectives: their commercial world,their confrontation with the Revolution and its aftermath,and their role in diversifying the local economy.By reading the source text,the translator finds that one of the linguistic characteristics of this book is that there are many long and complex sentences accompanied by a large number of parentheses.If not translated properly,parentheses in this book will pose a challenge for target readers to understand the source book.In this context,the translator firstly studies the definition,classification,grammatical function and pragmatic function of parentheses and their corresponding translation strategies.The translator then sums up the definition and classification of parentheses in the ST based on authoritative research and books.In this report,the translator summarizes five techniques for translating English parentheses with some case studies.First,parentheses can be retained at the original position in TT.Second,the position of the parentheses can be changed to the beginning or the end of a sentence in TT.Third,embedding is a common strategy when translating parentheses.Fourth,parenthetical marks such as dashes and brackets are also frequently used.Finally,if the above techniques don’t fit well in translating parentheses,then restructuring is a better choice.To come to the point,the translator hopes to provide some ideas for later research which focuses on E-C translation of parentheses. |
