The Difficulties And Solutions Of Translating English Complex Modifiers

An English modifier can be a word,phrase,or sentence that does not act as a major component in an English sentence but also indicates the meaning of the information in the sentence.Components such as adjectives,nouns,prepositional phrases,non-predicate structures,and clauses all can act as English modifiers in a sentence.Modifiers in different positions or with different functions all play different roles in English sentences.Therefore,English modifiers have a wide range of features and multiple classifications,which leads to the complex modification structure of English sentences and forms difficulties in translation.Based on the above background,this translation practice report focuses on the translation difficulties and solutions of English complex modifiers.The translation practice is excerpted from the book Environmental Treatment Technologies for Municipal,Industrial and Medical Wastes.Chapters 5 to 8 are involved.The difficulties of the English complex modifiers in this translation practice fall into three categories or six points.The modifiers based on the complex structure of the combination of non-predicate modifiers and prepositional phrases have the following classifications: the modifiers based on the complex structure of the combination of infinitives and prepositional phrases,and the modifiers based on the complex structure of the combination of participle and prepositional phrases.The modifiers based on the complex structure of the combination of non-predicate modifiers and subordinate clauses have the following classifications: the modifiers based on the complex structure of the combination of participle and attributive clauses,and the modifiers based on the complex structure of the combination of infinitive and object clauses.The modifiers based on the complex structure of the mixed use of multiple clauses have the following classifications: the complex structure of the modifiers caused by the nesting of multiple clauses,and the complex structure of the modifiers caused by the combination of multiple clauses.Because of the above difficulties in the translation of English complex modifiers,the following solutions are proposed: for the first category of difficulties,inversion and conversion of prepositional phrase translation are adopted;for the second category of difficulties,conversion of sentence components and negation are used;for the third category of difficulties,division,and integrated approach are adopted.Cases show that the above solutions effectively solve the problems in the translation.The translation difficulties and solutions in this thesis are put forward based on the specific translation practice.It is hoped that the research conclusions of this thesis can provide some references for other translators to translate English complex modifiers.