On The Study Of Sentence Group In Translation

Research projects in the different emphases of English and Chinese on hypotaxis and parataxis are indispensable to translation studies. And it is generally agreed that parataxis is one of the most important features distinguishing Chinese from English with Chinese showing paratactic prominence and English hypotactic prominence, as pointed out by Nida in Translating Meaning. Therefore, in translation studies or contrastive linguistics, research on hypotaxis and parataxis should be given due attention. Inspired by the character-center theory, the present dissertation looks at this feature in the light of the differences between the basic structural units of Chinese and English at the sentence group level and proposes relevant translation strategies.Ever since Wang Li put forward the concepts of "hypotaxis" and "parataxis", a good many books and papers have been seen on this topic. However, most of them did not carry out a systematic study or failed to conduct a thorough exploration—they only listed the external features of hypotaxis and parataxis. Lv Shuxiang, a highly-esteemed Chinese grammarian, said in 1990 that what is difficult is not the identification of the similarities and differences between languages but the clarification of the exact reasons for such similarities and differences, and the latter is the ultimate aim of contrastive studies. It is in pursuit of this aim that the author sets about identifying the internal causes of why English is hypotaxis-prominent while Chinese parataxis-prominent through looking closely at the differences between the "character" in Chinese and the "word" in English.Before the introduction of the major chapters in the dissertation, three points have to be made. First, what are "hypotaxis" and "parataxis"? This pair of concepts are to be dealt with in two aspects. In the broad sense, "hypotaxis" refers to the way in which language units such as words, phrases and sentences are connected by the overt lexical and grammatical, especially inflectional devices; "parataxis", on the other hand, indicates that the connection is realized by the semantic meaning or logical relation existing covertly between language units, In the narrow sense, both "hypotaxis" and "parataxis" are defined in the same way as those in the broad sense, except that the connection is restricted to that between sentences. This dissertation, taking sentence groups as the level at which relevant...