E-C Translation And Europeanized Chinese Constructions

The concept of uropeanized Chinese constructions is closely related to the special course of development of written vernacular Chinese. Written Chinese has taken two major forms in history wenyan (classical Chinese) and aihua (vernacular Chinese), with Vernacular Chinese Movement as the dividing line. The drastic change from classical Chinese to vernacular Chinese during the Movement has caused some confusion with regard to the standard or accepted way of writing in Chinese. Coincidentally, the hird wave of translation and modern Chinese literature have both reached the climax during the same period. Under such circumstances written Chinese has become liable to the influence of foreign languages as it was in contact with them by means of translation activity. This thesis aims at finding out the relationship between English-Chinese translation and the formation of some uropeanized Chinese constructions According to historical linguistics, language contact is a situation in which language borrowing takes place. Translation can be regarded as a special mode of language contact, for two languages come into contact with each other in the translator mind. Therefore, the uropeanized Chinese constructions discussed in this thesis is the manifestation of syntactic borrowing as a result of language contact in the form of translation. On the basis of the above considerations, this tbesis hypothesizes that the role that E-C translation has played in the formation of some uropeanized Chinese constructions is constrained by at least two factors he English sentence structure and the general rules of Chinese, which interact with each other during the contacting process. In order to avoid the ambiguity and confusion brought about by former researchers prescriptive and judgement-oriented approach, the author has adopted a descriptive approach in the research. The descriptive approachrequires that the researcher should closely observe the subject in the first place. Accordingly, the author has designed a four-step research method: to sort out the uropeanized Chinese constructions from six E-C translations that were done during the hird wave of translation and categorize them grammatically; to analyze the Europeanized constructions in comparison with pre-modern vernacular Chinese, with classical Chinese as reference; and finally to relate the Europeanized constructions in the translations to those in the writings originally done in Chinese, with examples found in modern Chinese literature and the contemporary Chinese publications. After the careful study of the six E-C translations, the author concludes that E-C translation during the hird wave of translation as a special mode of language contact, has made the impact of English on written vernacular Chinese possible, which is finally manifested in uropeanized Chinese constructions Besides such a ranslation style some Chinese writers have also assimilated the uropeanized Chinese constructions into their own writings, thus forming their individual writing styles. Through this preliminary study of uropeanized Chinese constructions by a descriptive approach, the author believes that translation studies, as a branch of the scientific studies, need more objective observation of the translations and the translating process, instead of mere summaries of translation experiences or normative judgements.