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： ********** 姓 名： 指导教师：
完成日期： 2013年5月6日
Contents
I. Introduction .......................................................................................................... 1 II. Literature Review ............................................................................................. 2 III. The Principles of Ellipsis .............................................................................. 4
A. Omitted words must be useless and unnecessary in the translated works. 5 B. The meaning of the omitted words is implied in the test. ............................. 5 C. Omitted words are self-evident. ...................................................................... 5
IV. The functions and application of ellipsis.................................................. 5
A. The Coherence of the Meaning of Expression ............................................... 6 B. The Coincidence of the Manner of Expression .............................................. 6
1. Ellipsis of Articles....................................................................................... 6 2. Ellipsis of Prepositions ............................................................................... 7 3. Ellipsis of Pronouns ................................................................................... 7 a. Ellipsis of Personal Pronouns.................................................................. 7 b. Ellipsis of Impersonal Indefinite Pronouns ........................................... 8 c. Ellipsis of Relative Pronouns................................................................... 8 4. Ellipsis of Conjunctions ............................................................................. 9 a. Ellipsis of Coordinating Conjunctions ................................................... 9 b. Ellipsis of Subordinate Conjunctions..................................................... 9 5. Ellipsis of Rhetorics ................................................................................... 9
V. Conclusion .......................................................................................................... 10 Works Cited ............................................................................................................ 11
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
2013年毕业论文 How to Deal with Ellipsis in English-Chinese Translation
I. Introduction
With the development of globalization, the world’s 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 Learner’s 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
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2013年毕业论文 How to Deal with Ellipsis in English-Chinese Translation
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, let’s 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 China’s 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.
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2013年毕业论文 How to Deal with Ellipsis in English-Chinese Translation
With China’s 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 country’s 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 translation－ellipsis 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,
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2013年毕业论文 How to Deal with Ellipsis in English-Chinese Translation
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 people’s 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 Ellipsis
Although 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
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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.
Let’s 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 ellipsis
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2013年毕业论文 How to Deal with Ellipsis in English-Chinese Translation
It is acknowledged that English and Chinese are two entirely different languages and each of them has its own characteristics in the way of expression. That’s 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 Expression
As 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 acknowledge the different cultures of the two languages, by which it will bring active effects for us to learn each of the two languages, and exchange culture with each other. Translators have made thousands of times to survey the differences and contrasts between English and Chinese in ellipsis.
Generally speaking, when doing English-Chinese translation, we can omit articles, prepositions, pronouns, conjunctions, rhetorics on the basis of the background of sentences.
1. Ellipsis of Articles
Some nouns have no article in Chinese, so they are usually omitted in the process of English-Chinese translation. Let’s look at the following examples. A square has four sides.—正方形有四条边
Things of a kind come together; people of a mind fall into the same group. 物以类聚，人以群分。
The horse is useful to man.—马是对人类有用的动物。 Milk is sold by the pound.—牛奶是按磅出售的。
The governments of the United States of America and the People’s Republic of China agreed to hold senior talks regularly on matters of mutual interest.
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2013年毕业论文 How to Deal with Ellipsis in English-Chinese Translation
美利坚合众国政府和中华人民共和国政府同意就共同关心的问题定期举行 高级会晤。
When doing English-Chinese translation, it is very common to omit articles. While sometimes, they couldn’t be omitted. For example, “He left without a word.—他一句话不说就走了。” Here the indefinite article “a” or “an” means “一”in Chinese, and it couldn’t be omitted. 2. Ellipsis of Prepositions
According to the different manners of English and Chinese, prepositions are usually omitted. For example,
The Chinese Communist Party was founded in Shanghai on July 1, 1921. 中国共产党于一九二一年七月一日在上海成立。
Here the prepositions “in” before “Shanghai” and “on” before “July” separately represent the place and the time.
I always go to visit my grandparents at weekend. —周末我总是去祖父家。
In this sentence the preposition “at” before “weekend” which shows the time. The joint decision to build the Tunnel was announced by President Francois Mitterrand and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in a ceremony at Lille on 21 January.
1月21日，弗朗索瓦·密特朗总统和和玛格丽特·撒切尔首相在里尔举行的一次仪式上宣布了修建英法隧道的决定。
Here, the preposition“on”before the date represents the specific time. Rumors had already spread along the streets and lanes.—大街小巷早就传遍了流言蜚语。
Here,“along”stands for place. According to the manner of Chinese expression it is common to be omitted. While, in the manner of English expression, it makes the version more vivid. 3. Ellipsis of Pronouns a. Ellipsis of Personal Pronouns
Many personal pronouns are always omitted in Chinese texts. Otherwise, they will make the statement unsmooth, or even have additional meanings, so they should be omitted according to the specific circumstances. For example,
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2013年毕业论文 How to Deal with Ellipsis in English-Chinese Translation
We assure you of our prompt attention to this matter. 我方保证立即处理此事。 You must excuse us for the inconveniences we have caused you. 请务必原谅我们给你方带来的不便。
You are kindly requested to let us have your best quotation for the canned fruits. 请提供水果罐头的最低报价。
We can see that the underlined words are all personal pronouns, and in the above translations, they are all omitted in order to make the translated works smoother and in accordance with Chinese usage. b. Ellipsis of Impersonal Indefinite Pronouns
If impersonal pronoun “it” and indefinite pronoun “one” are used for reference, most of them can be omitted in the translation (example (1)). However, when “it” refers to time, weather, distance, “it” usually could be omitted with the verb (example (2)). Moreover, “it” is often used as antecedents, forming emphasis sentences, and then the sentence can be converted to the corresponding Chinese emphases (example (3)).
Example (1) Be a place what it may, one gets to like it, if one lives long in it. 无论是什么样的地方，只要住久了，总会喜欢上的。 Example (2) He glanced at his watch, it was 7:15. 他看了看表，七点一刻了。
Example (3) It was on March 15th that we receives the market report which was anticipated by our manufacture.
我们是在3月15日才收到我方制造商期待的市场报告。 c. Ellipsis of Relative Pronouns
There are three methods to deal with relative pronouns connecting the attributive clause: the repetition of antecedents, substitutions and ellipses. The relative pronoun should be omitted when we translate the attributive clause into Chinese pre-modifier (example (4)) or divide it into coordinate clause (example(5)).
Example (4) Few people do business well who do nothing else. 出了生意之外什么事也不做的人是做不好生意的。
Example (5) Good people relationships between partners are the rudders which steer joint ventures through troubled water.
合资伙伴之间的和谐关系犹如船舵，能引导合资企业穿过惊涛骇浪。
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2013年毕业论文 How to Deal with Ellipsis in English-Chinese Translation
4. Ellipsis of Conjunctions
In the process of translation, the English conjunction can be translated literally, or converted into other corresponding parts of speech, or even omitted according to the context.
a. Ellipsis of Coordinating Conjunctions
Some English phrases of coordinate conjunctions always can be omitted according to Chinese idiomatic expressions. For instance,
The watch costs me one hundred and fifty dollars.
这块表花掉我一百五十元。
b. Ellipsis of Subordinate Conjunctions
In Chinese, word order can often be used to express or implied logical relations, therefore some English conjunctions in translation can be omitted. Let’s look at the following three examples,
Example (1) However, such change is not easy and can be accomplished only when leaders of both sides have no illusions, talk candor, and meet differences head-on.
然而，要实现这种改变并非轻而易举，只有双方领导人不抱幻 想、开诚布公、正视分歧、才能做到这一点。
Example (2) He declines to amplify on the Presidents’ statement since he had not read the text.
他没有看到总统的讲话稿，不愿加以发挥。
For the first example, we can see that the conjunction “when” combines with
“only” means “on condition that” or “as long as”. In this case, it just shows the logical relations, therefore, we can omit the meaning of “when”, that is to say, we should translate it into “只有”rather than “只有当……时”.
For the second example, the conjunction “since” implies the reason why he had not read the text. However, if we add “由于” before the translated sentence, that will be weird.
5. Ellipsis of Rhetorics
Ellipsis of rhetorics means to remove some words in the original version which
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are self-evident, dispensable or even superfluous in English to Chinese translation, in order to avoid long-winded sentences. The deleted can be any words, and the prerequisite of deletion relies on the logical relationship and the means of Chinese expression. Of course, after omitting, the translated works should be polished appropriately. In order to make myself better understood, let’s look at the following representative examples,
Example (1) University applicants who had worked at job would receive preference over those who had not. 报考大学的人，有工作经验者优先。
Example (2) As schedules, American and Chinese diplomats met on January 20, at the Chinese Embassy. It was their first get-together in more than two years.
美中两国外交官按照预定计划于1月20日在中国大使馆会晤。 这是两年多来的第一次。
All of the underlined parts above can be omitted in English-Chinese translation in order to make the translated works easier to be accepted by Chinese-speaking countries. For the first example, the rhetorics “would” should be deleted in the translated sentence, because the original sentence only wants to show the respect to the people who would like to apply for the job. And for the second example, after omitting, we need to polish it appropriately, therefore we’d better translate it as “会晤” rather than “聚会” or anything else.
V. Conclusion
Ellipsis is one of indivisible parts of the English-Chinese translation, and it makes the translated versions coherent and the manner of expression coincident corresponds with that used in Chinese. So we have to omit some parts to make our versions smooth and faithful to the original. However, ellipsis itself is not the purpose. The significant point is when doing translation the translator should try his best to express the exact meaning of the original version. Only when the translator has a thorough understanding of ellipsis in translation, can he accomplish the task with ease. If you just stick to the original, do mechanical translation and seldom consider the habits of target language, it will certainly affect the readability of the translation and
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can hardly get the expected results.
To be a good translator, the most essential work should be the study of both languages, as well as their manners of expression. Meanwhile, to do more practice is an effective way to make progress continuously to produce faithful, expressive and elegant translated works.
Works Cited
Bassnett M. S. Translation Studies. London: Methuen Co.Ltd. , 1990
Seleskovitch, Danica. Interpreting for International Conferences [M]. Stephanie
Dailey and Eric Norman McMillan. 3rd edition. Washington D.C.: Pen and Booth, 2002 古今明. 英汉基础翻译[M]. 上海：上海外语教育出版社，1997 辜正坤. 翻译标准多元互补论. 北京：中国对外研究出版公司，2000 华先发. 新实用英译汉教程[M]. 武汉：湖北教育出版社，2002 吕俊，侯向群. 英汉翻译教程[M]. 上海：上海外语教育出版社，2002 马祖毅. 中国翻译简史[M]. 北京：中国对外翻译出版社，2000 任文. 交替传译. 北京：外语教学与研究出版社，2004
叶朗，朱良志. Insight into Chinese Culture. 北京：外语教学与研究出版社，2008 张培基. 英译中国现代散文选[M]. 上海外语教育出版社，2002
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