Brief Contrastive Analysis of the Attributes Translation in English and Chinese

Abstract：Contrastive analysis of attributes in English and Chinese can help find some regularities of the similarities and differences .So this thesis shows the brief similarities and differences.

Key Words: English and Chinese；attributes ；contrastive analysis

Introduction

For the purpose of knowing various linguistic expressions of attributes in English and Chinese, and helping to deepen the understanding of English-Chinese attributes and to show our translation approach in order that language learners may translate English attributes into proper Chinese ones. Contrastive study is taken as the instructive theory in this thesis,which guids a contrastive study of the attributes between English and Chinese to find the similarities and differences.

I、Translation and Contrastive Study of Two Languages

Language is intermediary for the expression thoughts and information.Since translation requires effective transferring of language forms between the source language and the target language, and it is a particular linguistic activity, a contrastive study of these two languages useful for applied linguistics, which is considered to be an efficient way to enlarge our language knowledge of English and Chinese, becomes quite necessary and meaningful.

II、Contrast of Attributes between English and Chinese:Similarities and Differences

2.1 Attribute

What is an attribute? An attribute is a word or phrase syntactically subordinate to another word the noun-like. The function of phrase that it modifies, usually a noun or an attribute is to modify, describe and add meaning to such a nominal headword as a subject ,an object, or a predicative complement in English or a compound predicate in Chinese etc. Just as complement and adverbial, an attribute is not necessarily essential to the sentence structure, and it is only an adjunct without which the sentence can still be completed. But it is far from insignificant in meaning, for it may help amplify the meaning of the sentence, make the sentence clearer, more accurate, more vivid and impressive.For example: Her boyfriend was a tall, powerfully built man. 她男朋友是一个身材高大魁梧的人。

2.2 Similarities

There are quite a few similarities in the expression of attributes in English and Chinese: Nouns, pronouns, numerals, adjectives and prepositional phrases can be used as attributes both in English and in Chinese; And on the whole, the way that the determiners, adjectives or prepositional phrases function as attributes in English is by and large similar in usage to the possessive attributes in Chinese and to the way that the quantifiers, adjectives or prepositional phrases function as attributes in Chinese. For example:

Women's weaknesses are often exaggerated and their strengths overlooked.妇女的缺点往往被夸大，而他们的优点却被忽视。

There are 10 boys in our class。我们班有10个男生。

You are a proper fool if you believe it.你如相信它就是一个十足的傻瓜。

Mr. Black made a report about the prospects for educational development in their country.布莱克先生做了关于他们国家教育发展前景的报告。

2.3 Differences

Since English belongs to synthetic-analytic language, which has one typical features of synthetic language─inflections, compared with Chinese, the elements which can serve as attributes in English are more abundant and complex. There are some great differences in the constitutive elements of attributes between English and Chinese.

First, an adverb can be used as attribute in English but it can't bs in Chinese. For example: Their days together remained vividly in his thoughts.

Second, in English, verbs can't be used directly as attributes, and only the non-finite forms of verbs can be used as attributes. While in Chinese, verbs can be used directly as attributes. For example: Suddenly there appeared an old lady dressed in rags. 突然出现了衣衫褴褛的老奶奶。

Third, there are many attributive clauses in English. An attributive clause works in a sentence as a post-positioned modifier to modify a noun or pronoun, usually headed by an antecedent. But we have no relative clause in Chinese: E.g.: I told the news to Tim, who later did it to his brother.

Conclusion

We may make our minds about similarities and differences between English and Chinese through contrastive study.Similarities and differences coexist in the national thinking modes and language system between English and Chinese, and influenced by this, the attributes in these two languages are not entirely same. That's why the translating of attributive clauses between English and Chinese is really a problem to translators. And the information in English attributive clauses will either keep the attributive features or exchange to other sentential elements.

Reference

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