Comparison in English-Chinese Translation

【Abstract】This paper, which consists of three chapters, focuses on the comparison between Chinese and English from the perspective of translation, while it gives some suggestions about English-Chinese translation.

【Key words】English；Chinese；translation

1. Comparison of Sentence Structures

In the process of English course, enlarging vocabulary and learning grammars and sentence structures, as a fundamental study, is an integral part. Therefore, in the course of the comparison between English and Chinese of this paper, this foundation is also a component part. The author begins this paper with the analysis of the sentence structures.

1.1 Similarities

When a child was in the kindergarten, teachers always encouraged him to speak a simple but an integrated sentence. In fact, whether a complete sentence has many words and phrases or only a few, it should have a subject and a predicate at least. For English, its component of sentence is the same.

The main part of a sentence is subject and predicate. And the minor part is object, attributive, adverbial modifier, predicative and so on. However long a sentence is, it should include several of them. In this case, Chinese and English are the same. The unlike point must be the order of these parts. For example, the adverbial modifier is always at the beginning or at the end of an English sentence but at the beginning or in the middle of a Chinese sentence. When a translator coming cross a sentence like "I am going to see this film tomorrow." he had better not to translate it into "我要去看这部电影明天。" because such an expression does not exist in Chinese. The adverbial modifier should be moved to the middle ――我明天要去看这部电影.

1.2 Differences

Though the sentence component is a kind of similar, in the specifics there are still a great number of differences, which translators should pay more attention to when doing translation.

1.2.1 Length of Sentence

There are many clauses and subordinate clauses in English sentences, so they often seem longer than Chinese ones. However, a long sentence can be divided into several comparatively short ones to be translated. Of course, if it can be translated into one proper long sentence, never mind. Please take this sentence for an example ――The USA still has one of the highest standards of living in the world, although, at the present time, 10% are below what the Government considers to be the 'poverty line'. It can be translated into "美国的生活水平在世界上依然名列前茅，尽管现在还有百分之十左右的人处在政府认为的'贫困线'下。"

1.2.2 Subject

Another difference is the usage of subject. In Chinese, subjects can be omitted in the sentences which show the natural phenomenon, time, season, climate and so forth. For example, we can say "下雨了。"or "六月十五那天，热极了。" However, in English, subjects must be used. The Chinese sentences above should be respectively translated into "It is raining." and "It was very hot in 15th June."

Thus, it can be concluded that in Chinese, most nouns can be used as subject whereas in English, apart from these nouns, subject can be adverb as 'there', pronouns like 'it', 'anything' and so on. In particular, 'it' is widely used. Translation of these subjects should be taken into account.

1.2.3 Passive Voice

Almost every child in the elementary school was told to do the exercise of "被字句". In fact, the tense of this kind of sentence should be called passive voice. In English, it is easy to distinguish the sentences of passive voice, because these sentences usually include a predicative or an auxiliary verb and a past participle at least. Of course, some sentences of indicative mood can also express a passive meaning. For example, "This book is worth reading." Therefore, it depends on the sentence itself to do the translation.

"The cup was broken by my brother." can be translated into "杯子被我弟弟打破了。" or "杯子是我弟弟打破的。" From these two sentences, we find that "被"does not need to be used all the time. Because passive voice is not easy to translate, please fully comprehend the meaning before translating.

2. Comparison of tenses

In the process of translating, we should grasp, in the gross, not only the structures but also the tenses, which is the topic of this chapter.

2.1 Similarities

For human beings, what we have experienced is called past; what we are experiencing is named as present; and what we will experience is addressed as future. Whatever we want to express about us, we can not get rid of these three tenses. Therefore, whether English or Chinese, it has these three main tenses all along. When translators do English-Chinese translation, they should remember this point, and find a homologous Chinese version.

2.2 Differences

Though the tense shows nothing but whether the person and the thing in the past, at the present or in the future, its forms vary from language to language.

Compared with Chinese, English has more tenses. There are such 12 main tenses in English ――simple present tense, simple past tense, simple future tense, present progressive tense, past progressive tense, future progressive tense, present perfect tense, past perfect tense, future perfect tense, present perfect progressive tense, past perfect progressive tense and future perfect progressive tense.

Furthermore, the structure of the verb of each tense in English is comparatively fixed. Thus, on looking at an English sentence, because of the fixed auxiliary verbs and the usual collocation, not relying on the adverbial modifier, readers can know when its content happens. However, Chinese is rather different. Though a few sentences may use "了"or "过"to indicate the perfect tense, the majority need the adverbial modifier and the adverb to show the tense. For instance, when coming across the sentence "He was 9 years old." translators may put it into "他9岁。"with the context which has already shown the tense. However, if only this sentence needs translating, "他那时9岁。"will be better.

3. Conclusion

this paper pays attention to the introductions of the theory of comparison and of some skills. It compares Chinese and English in sentence structures, tenses and some words.Meanwhile, it takes a lot of examples to introduce a few skills of translation. The author tries her best to combine the theory with the practice in order to enable the readers to enjoy it without tediousness.

Although these theory and examples may be limited, the author still hopes that they will be helpful.

【Bibliography】

［１］贺立民. 贺氏英文法全书（修订版 上册） [M]. 北京：中国科学技术出版社，1998.

［２］宋天锡、袁江、袁冬娥. 翻译新概念--英汉互译实用教程 [M]. 北京：国防工业出版社，2000.

［３］孙万彪、王恩铭. 高级翻译教程（第二版） [M]. 上海：上海外语教育出版社，2003.