浅析英语长句的理解与翻译(2)
In addition, the English translation that is an indispensable step in foreign exchanges plays an important part in promoting cultural exchanges and learning advanced knowledge of science and technology from foreign countries. In spite of this, a lot of school students and social workers encounter many difficulties in learning English. The most prominent problem is the understanding and translation of English long sentences, which is the weak link in learning. The thesis will take the obstacle of English long sentences understanding as the breakthrough point. Through the analysis of the basic structure and grammatical functions of English long sentences, the thesis systematically explains the methods of translating long sentences, which lays a foundation to translating English long sentences accurately and completely.
II. Difficulties in Understanding English Long Sentences
English sentences may be very short, or quite long. Short sentences are concise while “long capable of expressing complex ideas with precision and suitable for the explanation of theories or the description of things, events, etc. in detail.” (Li 342) About the long sentence, Nida has pointed out that “the essential skill of translators is being able to understand correctly the meaning of a source text.” (Nida 139) Long sentences make us feel difficult, whose characteristics are that the sentences are longer. A sentence usually has three or four lines, and can be a paragraph. The thesis will discuss the causes of the difficulties in understanding English long sentences.
2.1 The Lack of Vocabulary
The amount of vocabulary is the cornerstone of reading the article. If we do not have enough vocabulary, it is hard to finish the task of reading. Do not mention other problems as well. If we have accumulated enough vocabulary, we can meet few un-familiar words when we read an article, we will have a better understanding for the whole.
2.2 The Lack of Background Information of the Topic
When we read in English, it is hard to understand long sentences, and even more translate them into Chinese, which is caused by the difference of culture, tradition, background and habit. In order to understand English long sentences, and we need acquire the knowledge from the Internet media, newspaper and magazines, which is very useful for us to learn the article.
2.3 The Long and Complicated Sentences
Translating does not simply mean converting one language into another. The translation must be proper and suitable and obey the rules of the target language. “The source text is written in the source language according to the principles of the source language; a translation is a recreation in the target language, so it should observe the principles of the target language.”(Sun 58)Wang Dongfong and Chu Zhida have defined “express” as “to endow the understanding with a proper form in target language according to the customs of the target language.”(Liu 24) Through studying Zhang Guruo’s translation of Tess of the d’Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure, some knowledge has been learned including how to translate embedded clauses, adverbials, post-modifiers and long sentences. In this part, the thesis will study how to deal with the difficult points in translating long sentences into Chinese.