Chapter 1 Introduction
1.1 Research Background
As the bridge for the ideas exchange between people with different languages,translation enables ideas exchange with the re-expression of original text by translatorswho master at least two languages. Under the combined influence of several factors,such as history, regional difference, religious faith, ways of thinking, etc., there is noidentical language or culture in the world. Therefore it is extremely difficult to achieveabsolute equivalence in translation. In 1898 Yan Fu said in his Translator’s Remarks onTranslation of Evolution and Ethnics, “Translation has to do three difficult things: tobe faithful, expressive and elegant.” And it has been adopted as a translated criterionlater. In practical translation, many difficulties, including the translation of the Englishlong sentences, can be overcome under the instruction of the criterion of faithfulness,expressiveness and elegance. Wang Linxia (2009) once put forward that we should firstfigure out the grammar structure of a sentence, and second find out the central contentof the whole sentence and meanings of every layer, then analyze the mutual logicalrelations between the layers and finally translate the source text correctly inaccordance with the features and means of expression of Chinese.For more than 10 years, the studies translating English long sentences intoChinese have never stopped. In recent years, many books and papers onEnglish-Chinese translation have discussed this topic. The research of this problem hasachieved somewhat great success.
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1.2 Significance of Research
The research of translation techniques of long sentences is important for thetranslator to improve the translation competence. The author firstly analyzes thedifferences between English and Chinese through a comparison between the twolanguages, and then summarizes several methods of translating English long sentencesin literary works based on her own translating Olive Kitteridge into Chinese. If wemake a contrast study on English and Chinese, we may find some regularity fortranslation, which may enlighten the translator and be more valuable than sometechniques based on experience (Sun Zhili, 2003: 67). In order to do so, a certainnumber of examples are selected to make the readers more intuitive to understand thesetechniques so as to use them more easily in the translation. It may be even helpful forthe translation teaching.
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Chapter 2 Syntactical Differences between English andChinese
2.1 Difference in Strategy for Making Sentences
One of the syntactic differences between English and Chinese is that the former ishypotactic and the latter paratactic. Nida has pointed out “For English and Chinese,perhaps one of the most important linguistic distinction is hupotaxis and parataxic. InEnglish and most Indo-European languages, a great deal of subordination is clearlymarked by conjunctions such as such as if, athough, because, when, in order to, so andso that. One may, however, communicate essentially the same concepts by means ofparataxis; that is to say, placing two propositions together without making therelationship but indicating by content what is the evident relationship” (Nida, 1982:16).The hypotaxis in English means that major attention is paid to grammar and cohesiveties in a sentence. Emphasis is placed on the logic of sentence contents, and sentencemembers are connected by their meaning. To read Chinese sentences readers have totry to understand the meaning of the sentences, As a result, the meaning of an Englishsentence is clear because it has a clear sentence structure.Wang Li, a well known Chinese linguist, once gave a vivid description to thesyntactic structure difference between Chinese and English: “The structure of Englishis like interlinks, and links are connected together but with obvious traces; thestructure of Chinese is like a seamless heavenly robe, with patches pieced together butwithout a trace. The grammar of English is
