英语专业毕业论文 英汉语序对比及翻译中的语序调整(2)

The second function of word order is to emphasize the most important part of a

sentence which is of indicative meaning or contains more useful information. Such

emphasis can be realized by changing the word order, that is to put words in unusual

positions , which are different from normal positions in a sentence.

The third function of word order is to express continuity of thought in sentences.

This continuity is often supported by pronouns and adverbs.

2. The differences between English and Chinese word order

In this part of the thesis, the author points out that thinking pattern is the root of

different word order, and analyzes how different thinking patterns influence Chinese

and English word order. The following also gives a general introduction to the

features of Chinese and English word order.

2.1 The root of different word order

From the perspective of cultural linguistics, language structure effectively

reflects the thinking patterns, moral values, social custom and history of its nation (Li

39). To put it another way, language is a reflection of people’s outlook towards the

world. Language is closely related to one’s thinking pattern: language is a reflection

英语专业翻译方向 毕业论文

of thinking pattern, while thinking pattern is the soul of language. Growing up in

different environments and backgrounds, different ethnics and nations foster distinct

thinking modes, so people tend to emphasize the most useful or important information

according to their own language habits and thinking patterns, which leads to different

word orders.

The thinking pattern of Chinese people is like a circle. Chinese people rely on

holistic thinking pattern, which is to combine the nature of different things together as

a whole but overlook the particularity of things. They tend to express their meaning in

an implicit and indirect way. As for the word order, Chinese people focus on facts or

background information in the first place, and then give their opinions. That is to say,

the most important information is placed at the end of a sentence. On the contrary, the

thinking pattern of English people is like a line. They depend on analytical thinking

pattern, which is to analyze and summarize the dominating and the most typical

nature of things. They get accustomed to express their meaning in an explicit and

direct way. English people usually give their attitudes or the most important

information at first, and then add some facts or background information to support

themselves. Therefore, different thinking patterns between the two nations lead to the

distinctive features of Chinese and English word order.

2.2 The features of English and Chinese word order

Influenced by thinking patterns, Chinese and English word orders are different

from each other in various ways.

Chinese language lacks morphological changes, so word order is of vital importance in the semantic and rhetoric applications. On the contrary, English is an inflectional language, but its inflectional changes

have been greatly reduced comparing with its ancient predecessor or with

typical inflectional languages of Latin. (Bai 7)

英语专业翻译方向 毕业论文

Chinese sentences feature an open beginning and a closed ending, which allows the beginning of a sentence to realize reversed linear Expansion; English sentences feature a closed beginning and an open ending, which allows the ending of a sentence to realize natural linear expansion. (Y. Zhang 17)

That is to say, attributive modifiers has to be put in front of a core word in a

Chinese sentence, while attributive modifiers can be placed either in front of or

behind of a core word in an English sentence.

Besides, in terms of time order, Chinese language describes events or actions in

chronological order, while English language is not restricted by logical sequence or

chronological order. As for logical order, it is not always easy to make out the logical

relationship of linguistic units in Chinese sentences, because Chinese language

relying on parataxis to organize sentence structure pays more attention to the implicit

meaning but less to the grammatical forms. On the contrary, it is easy to make out the

structure and syntactic function of English sentences, because English language relies

on conjunctions to emphasize the logical order of sentences. To crown it all, Chinese

and English word orders have their own features. The translators should be aware of

and pay attention to the differences of word order in the translation process.

3. The comparison of word order and the strategies in translation

After a brief introduction to word order and a simple analysis of influences of

thinking pattern on word order, the following part of this thesis will compare English

and Chinese word order from four aspects: subject and predicate structure, modifiers,

time order and logical order, and give some word order changing strategies that can be

used in translation from the four aspects above.

英语专业翻译方向 毕业论文

3.1 Subject and predicate structure

3.1.1 Subjects in English and themes in Chinese

A complete sentence must consist of at least a subject and a predicate. Halliday pointed out that components of English sentences can be divided into not only subject and predicate according to grammatical function, but also theme and rhyme according to communicative function. “Theme is the element whi …… 此处隐藏：5481字，全部文档内容请下载后查看。喜欢就下载吧 ……