英语专业翻译方向论文完整版.doc

石河子大学毕业论文 题目： 如何处理英翻汉中的省略 How to Deal with Ellipsis in English-Chinese Translation 院 （系）： 外国语学院 专 业： 英 语 班 级： 20095 学 号： 2009051431 姓 名： 指导教师： 完成日期： 2013年5月6日 ContentsI. Introduction1II. Literature Review2III. The Principles of Ellipsis4A. Omitted words must be useless and unnecessary in the translated works.5B. The meaning of the omitted words is implied in the test.5C. Omitted words are self-evident.5IV. The functions and application of ellipsis5A. The Coherence of the Meaning of Expression6B. The Coincidence of the Manner of Expression61. Ellipsis of Articles62. Ellipsis of Prepositions73. Ellipsis of Pronouns7 a. Ellipsis of Personal Pronouns7 b. Ellipsis of Impersonal Indefinite Pronouns8 c. Ellipsis of Relative Pronouns84. Ellipsis of Conjunctions9 a. Ellipsis of Coordinating Conjunctions9 b. Ellipsis of Subordinate Conjunctions95. Ellipsis of Rhetorics9V. Conclusion10Works Cited11 Abstract With the development of globalization, the world's political, economic and cultural communications are becoming increasingly frequent. Meanwhile, the role of translation cannot be ignored. Due to language and cultural disparity, reasonable translation is particularly important. How to deal with ellipsis in translation is one of the important aspects. The paper will explore ellipsis in English-Chinese translation from five aspects, which are ellipsis of pronouns, conjunctions, articles, prepositions, modifications, so as to achieve the purpose of smoother and clearer communication among China and English-speaking countries.Key words: cultural disparity; translation; ellipsis 摘要 随着全球化的不断发展，各国之间的政治、经济、文化交流日渐频繁。其中，翻译的作用不可小觑。由于各国语言文化的差异，合理的翻译就显得尤为重要。如何处理翻译中的省略是其中一个重要方面。本文将从代词、连词、冠词、介词、修饰性五个方面的省略探究英翻汉中的省略问题，从而达到中国与英语国家交流更加畅通的目的。关键词: 文化差异；翻译；省略I. Introduction With the development of globalization, the worlds political, economic and cultural communications are becoming increasingly frequent. Therefore, the role of translation cannot be ignored. However, the differences between English and Chinese cultures that are reflected in the two languages pose considerable difficulty.It is acknowledged that when doing translation one cannot translate word for word, or sentence by sentence. Therefore, we must use some translation strategies such as amplification, ellipsis, conversion and so on. Ellipsis as one of the basic translation methods plays an essential role in English-Chinese rendition. Translators apply it in order to make their works more coherent and understandable.According to the Oxford Advanced Learners English-Chinese Dictionary, ellipsis means “leaving out a word or words from a sentence deliberately, when the meaning can be understood without them.” Ellipsis in translation does not mean cutting some content from the original texts. What could be omitted are words that are useless in translated works or else they will make the versions redundant or disobey the manner of expression in another language. Some words and phrases are useless in Chinese but necessary in English. Articles in English are the most significant phenomenon from this aspect. They are very important in English, but we can hardly see any reflection of this aspect in Chinese. Ellipsis is designed on the basis of faithfulness to the original text, making it more fluent, smooth, and concise, thus conforming to idiomatic Chinese. In this case, translators apply it in order to make their versions more coherent and better understood. The following two paragraphs analyze the reason why it is so widely used.First of all, Chinese expressions are much briefer than those of English. So ellipsis as part of a special and inseparable translation method is widely used in English-Chinese translation. Generally speaking, a book or a passage which describes the same content in English may be longer in length than that in Chinese, because both English and Chinese have their own characteristics, such as being succinct in language, being abundant in words, being brief in sentences, as well as being flexible in structure. Therefore, brevity brings convenience to our daily communication and usage. Secondly, English grammar is complete in sentence structure. The place of subject predicate, object and adjective in a sentence are fixed. A sentence in English consists of the subject and the predicate, no matter how brief it is. Therefore, there must be a large number of link verbs in English. As an integral part of the whole, its function cannot be neglected. Obviously, they are more widely used than that in Chinese. In order to make myself understood, lets look at the following two sentences.(a) . You reap what you sow. 种瓜得瓜，种豆得豆。(b) . True words are not fine-sounding, fine-sounding words are not true. 信言不美，美言不信。In the first Chinese version, there is no subject and in the second one there is no prediction. No doubt the omitted parts make the sentence structure in Chinese much briefer than that in English. Though neither of the two sentences has full sentence structure, we Chinese still know exactly what they mean, and to some degree they are much briefer. The paper will explore ellipsis in English-Chinese translation from five aspects, which are ellipses of pronouns, conjunctions, articles, prepositions, modifications, so as to achieve smoother and clearer communications between China and English-speaking countries.II. Literature Review Long before, some people began to learn other countries languages to understand others cultures. In China, Xuanzang was the first translator who not only translated the Sanskrit sutras into Chinese, but also introduced the first Chinese writings to foreign countries, whom made foreigners understood Chinas ancient culture. Meanwhile, he was the first to translate Lao Tse's works into Sanskrit. Indian scholars had a high opinion of Xuanzang, "In China, there is no such a greater translator, nor in the human cultural history. We can only say that Xuanzang is the first great translator."(Ye Lang, 2008, 28) We can say that it was Xuanzang who motivated people to know the different parts of the world, their cultures and the peoples who live there. Then, some big countries such as America, China, and so on became a melting pot (Gu Zhengkun, 2000, 86). People have imperceptibly spent thousands of years knowing each other. With Chinas entry into WTO and its open-up policy, cross-cultural exchanges are increasingly frequent between China and other countries. A lot of foreign tourists come to visit China. While traveling, these foreigners are not satisfied with the translations of the scenic spots. Sometimes, they even feel confused. A lot of problems exist in the translation, such as misuse of words, poor expression of meaning and so on. All of these poor translations do harm to our countrys international image, and bring lots of inconveniences to the foreign visitors. (Ma Zuyi, 2000, 68). I am fond of tourism and being a free tourist like those who are good at enjoying their wonderful lives. The love of tourism makes me feel the need to improve the translation. But every time when I have a trip, many unsuitable translations of the names of those scenic spots will embarrass me. Tourism is part of intercultural communication, so proper translation of the scenic spots become more and more important to our country. Communication plays a significant role in the globalized society. In order to know each other better, people from all over the world have tried a verity of ways. Of course, translation is one of them. All translators have done their best to make the translated works more consistent with the needs of people, and they really have done a great job (Gu Jinming, 1997, 26). And for this reason, I want to retrospect the course of its development. After a thorough evaluation, I choose a branch of translationellipsis in translation from English to Chinese, then I did the following jobs. I put all my researches and other stuffs together, and then I found that it is a common case in English and Chinese which draws much academic interest. In 1976, Halliday and Hsan classified ellipsis into nominal, verbal and clausal ellipsis (Danica, 2002, 89). This classification exerts great influence academically. Thereafter, ellipsis in Chinese and English has been studied according to this theory, which is based on different layers of structure. This kind of study underlines differences and similarities of ellipsis in Chinese and English.Another famous theory to explain ellipsis is Economy Principle, which was put forward by Chomsky (1991, 1993, and 1995) in his Generate Crammer. It maintains that language and linguistic study follow Economy Principle, which means using the least effort to express the most information. This principle just coincides with ellipsis in function.In this thesis, I think that brevity is the most obvious and common function of ellipsis, especially in daily language. And in both English and Chinese, people advocate brevity. Shakespeare once remarked, “brevity is the soul of wit”, （Hamlet, act2, scene2, p4）and in Chinese there are numerous idioms like “yan jian yi gai” (meaning compendious). However, apart from the function of brevity, ellipsis embodies other functions which are also pretty common in the two languages but less noticed (Hua Xianfa, 2002, 53). These functions exist in both English and Chinese unevenly and represent great colorfulness of language. Exploring other functions of ellipsis and searching for functional recreation in translation will be of largely benefit to both English-Chinese and Chinese-English translation. I found that when Chinese authors try to analyze ellipsis in English to Chinese translation, they always initially put articles in the list. They consider that it is a common phenomenon that Chinese always leave out personal articles. While it is obviously different in English that almost every sentence has a subject, we can see articles fluently. That is because when we translate from English to Chinese, personal articles can be omitted, even though sometimes it may appear once, it can also be omitted if necessary. Furthermore, if the objects can be seen obviously, personal articles should also be omitted. However, it never happens in English. From this point, it is not only allowable but also necessary when we translate personal articles which are objects into Chinese. The development of society, in some way, has deliberately promoted the way of peoples thinking. Translation system is becoming more and more perfect, and people from all over the world can enjoy the convenience.。However, we cannot neglect that there are still some problems in this field in China, and we have less influential Chinese translators in the world. Therefore, we still have a long way to go in translation. III. The Principles of EllipsisAlthough ellipsis is commonly used in English-Chinese translation, it is not used freely without any principle. So what is omitted must be a certain word that is considered necessary in English but useless in Chinese. They may be something that has been mentioned in the same passage or in the same sentence, or even something that is self-evident in Chinese. Ellipsis as one of translation skills, its principles must obey the principles of translation. Different translators have different opinions on the principles of translation. With the development of translation, in 1791, the first book about translation was written in English. That is The Principles of Translation which was published by Alexander Franser Tytler, who was a historian and translator and put forward three principles about translation. Firstly, the translated text should completely repeat the thinking of original text. Secondly, it must keep the characteristics of the style of the two. The last is to keep the translated work as smooth as the original text. After that, in 1898, Yan Fu pointed out that translated works must be faithful, expressive and elegant. In 1935, Lu Xun, a well-known writer in China, advanced that when doing translation we must consider the following two aspects: to make it easy to understand and to keep the style of the original.According to the principles of translation, ellipsis of words must obey the following principles:A. Omitted words must be useless and unnecessary in the translated works. For example, “You reap what you sow.种瓜得瓜，种豆得豆。”The personal pronoun “you” in the translated version is omitted, because “you” could be anyone in the world. Personal pronouns like “you”, “we” in English, which play a role as subjects are always omitted when translated into Chinese. B. The meaning of the omitted words is implied in the test. Lets take “If winter comes, can spring be far behind?冬天来了，春天还会远吗?” as an example. In the translated sentence there is not Chinese characters“如果”at all. Here the conditional conjunction “if” is always omitted in daily communication and usage. C. Omitted words are self-evident. For example, “Television signals have a short range.电视信号的传播距离很短。” In the translated sentence there is not a Chinese character “有”at all. Here the English word“have”is considered to be a word which can vividly show the characteristics of television signals.IV. The functions and application of ellipsisIt is acknowledged that English and Chinese are two entirely different languages and each of them has its own characteristics in the way of expression. Thats why we should handle ellipsis in a practical way. That is to say, the reason we use ellipsis in English-Chinese translation is to make translated works coherent and make the manner of expression coincident with those Chinese expressions in original text.A. The Coherence of the Meaning of ExpressionAs we all know, if we translate a work word for word, it will be redundant. Moreover, it may even change the original meaning and the style, which will make readers confused about translated versions. Therefore, useless words should be omitted when necessary. B. The Coincidence of the Manner of Expression As is known to all, the manner of thinking is affected by culture. To some degree, the ways of thinking and the form or style of the two languages help us to acknowle