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A Study of the Hidden Causal Relation in Chinese-English Translation and its Strategies

 

【作者】 庄伟伟

【机构】 王村店中学

【摘要】

【关键词】
【正文】1. Introduction
  Logical relation is an important part in language. When translating a text, a book, even a dialogue, it can't be ignored. Chinese is paratactic. It is not like English which relies on the form to convey the meaning. But Chinese depends on the inner meaning much. The logical relation in Chinese sometimes is not expressed by the conjunction words. A lot of people have researched on the translation of the conjunction words. It is not this writer's focus. This writer focuses on the hidden causal relations. Therefore, it is important to know about the differences between English and Chinese first when translating Chinese to English. 
  2. A brief analysis of hidden causal relation in Chinese expression
  Many scholars have studied some methods to express causal relation in a view of the property of word, It is necessary to summarize or have a general idea of these components which show the hidden causal relation to achieve perfect translation effect.
  2.1 Predicate Verbs
  There are some verbs showing the meaning of hidden causal relation, and generally speaking, these verbs are predicates in English sentence. For example, "造成" "导致" "带来" "引起", these words can be translated into "cause" "lead" "arouse" "bring forth" and so on. 
  2.2 Adverbials
  It is clear that various adverbial clauses can also express the hidden causal relation besides adverbial of cause clause. So when translating Chinese into English, it is a good way to make a causal sentence with the help of adverbial of time or place and so on. 
  2.3 Prepositions
  In Chinese sentences, some prepositions show the hidden causal relation, such as "多亏了" "鉴于" "考虑到" and so on. It is useful to translate simple causal sentences after having a general idea of this kind of prepositions.
  3. Major differences between the Chinese and English language
  English is hypotactic, namely, English is a language in which the logical meaning of a group of sentences is conveyed by using external methods, such as inserting connectives in between. Chinese is mainly paratactic, namely, Chinese is a language in which the logical meaning of a group of sentences is not presented by the use of connectives, instead, conveyed through the context. If English abounds itself with these cohesive ties, Chinese involves few cohesive ties. Chinese attaches great importance to covert coherence and contextual meaning. In this paper, writer generally divides the differences into the following four aspects.
  3.1 Modes of thinking
  In the process of translation, we often have to adjust or rearrange the word order owing to the different syntaxes of English and Chinese languages. Generally speaking, English sentence patterns tend to put the near distance, the minor and specific first, in a weak-strong sequence, while the Chinese sentence patterns are on the contrary, putting the far distance, the major and general first, in a strong-weak sequence.                
  3.2 Sentence structure
  English is an additive language and Chinese is a synthetic language. An English sentence is like a tree with the subject and verb structure as its truck and other parts as the branches. A Chinese sentence is like a piece of bamboo, all parts are paratactic. The parts of the sentence are connected by words in English but in Chinese all parts are logically connected. There are a great many of conjunctions and relative in English. There are a lot of clauses in a sentence to modify the object, while in Chinese there are a lot of short sentences.
  3.3 Form of verbs
  In Chinese, the form of the verbs is fixed, in other words, they don't vary with the changes of the personal pronoun and tense. Unlike the Chinese verbs, verbs in     English sentences diverse in different conditions. English verb is the most active and changeable in various parts of speech. The diversity of Chinese verb cannot be compared. Only from the point of grammatical category, English verbs have the categories of number, person, aspect and tense, while the Chinese verb itself is not entirely have the above categories, often need to use other words or context to express its meaning. Verbs in Chinese, however, there is no the grammatical category of "tense". The tense of Chinese verbs is to be expressed by other means. Specifically, Chinese tenses verbs should be represented by behavior or state. And the adverbials of time, adverbs, and the context, superimposed verbs and other structure, etc., can be single or combined in the sentence to means the time of action or state. 
  In other words, even if there is no adverbials of time "every evening" and "this evening" in these English sentences, we will still be able to judge the sentences from the different form of verb tenses.
  3.4 The habit of expressing
  Every language has its own peculiar ways of combining sentence, and so do English and Chinese. Some components of sentence are relatively changeless in Chinese or English language. But the position of the components is different in Chinese and English language according to their own habit of expressing.
  First, the adverbial position is different. In the English language, the position of adverbials is random, and can be at the end of sentences, at the beginning of sentences, or between the sentences. But Chinese are used to put adverbials in sentence first to emphasize the adverbial besides the main clause.
  4. Translation strategies of hidden causal relation in Chinese to English 
  Regarding the differences between Chinese and English language and the common hidden logical relation in Chinese, in order to convey the meaning thoroughly, strategies should be taken into consideration accordingly in the course of translating. After having a general idea of Chinese and English sentence, it is easier to translate between these two different sentences. And there are some strategies can be summarized to follow.
  In order to make English sentences that translated from Chinese sentences authentic, it is necessary to follow the structure of English sentence.
  4.1 Transforming the verbs
   Adding conjunctions to build English causal sentences
Conjunction of causality is usually used to express causal relation. And generally it can be classified into two types: reason and result. These conjunctions, such as "for", "as", convey the meaning of reason. Some conjunctions convey the meaning of result, such as "therefore", "hence", "consequently" and so on.
  Consequently, the black mother, normally working as a domestic or nursemaid, was the family provider by default.
  4.2 Building causal clauses
  The causal sentence patterns need to be accumulated in the daily translation practice. Each sentence pattern above can not be used in any situations. So it is important to choose appropriate sentence patterns when translate causal relation.
  In a word, the translation strategies of hidden causal relation above are usually used in causal relation translation. They provide a new idea to guide the translation practice. Besides the causal relation sentences, it can be translated from the aspect of prepositions, adverbial clauses, conjunctions and infinitive, participles and so on. What's more, the strategies need to be supplemented by lots of translation practice.
  5. Conclusion 
  In conclusion, when translating Chinese into English, one must take causal relation into account as it is the important part of the thinking both in Chinese and English language. The point is that the expressing form of the causal relation is different. Chinese expresses its causal relation through the inner meaning. However, English does that by the way of the conjunction words. The thesis analyzes the differences in Chinese and English language, hidden causal relation in Chinese language, the importance of logical relation and the translation strategies. When translating Chinese into English, try to find out the hidden causal relation between the sentences and work out the ways to convey the real meaning the writer intends to express.
  • 【发布时间】2021/12/28 21:03:15
  • 【点击频次】462