The Representation Of Grammatical Meaning In Translation

After the World War II, translation theories began to take linguistics into consideration under the influence of modern linguistics and information theory. The relation between language and translation is explored, possible strategies for some translation difficulties are discussed in the perspective of linguistics, which push forward the translation studies. Translation is a broad concept which can be defined in various ways. Barchudarov ( 1985), defines it as " the change of the act of speech (i.e. discourse) from one language into another language without changing the content or meaning". The Chinese Word Dictionary (1989) also defines that translation means to translate the meaning in one language into another language without change. The above definitions suggest that translation is the conversion of meaning between languages. Translation studies revolve around the research of "meaning". Yet, on this kernel issue, translators have not reached an agreement. There always exists a kind of misconception which believes that grammar does not have meaning, for it seems to be merely a set of arbitrary rules about arrangements-rules that must be followed if one wants to be understood. We agree with Nida that grammar has meanings (1982). Meanings represented by grammatical structures are grammatical meanings. The grammatical meaning does not simply mean the combination of all the phrasal items' meaning. Meaning of a linguistic unit is partly determined by its specific grammatical structure. There is neither grammatical form without meaning, nor grammatical meaning without form.As Jacobson mentioned that the grammatical category is the most complicated issue in translation, especially in translation of those languages with rich inflections. Belonging to two different language families, English and Chinese are different in grammatical category, which constantly requires the adjustments of grammatical structure in translation. The translation between Chinese and foreign languages is processed by contrastive studies in essence. Thestudies of translation theories, principles and techniques are closely related to the contrastive linguistics, while the representation of grammatical categories in translation is a complex work. Based on the considerations mentioned above, this thesis makes comparisons of six grammatical categories of much difference and controversy in English and Chinese from the general linguistic angle, and proposes to explore the importance of grammatical meaning and its representation in translation.Based on the comprehensive study of scholastic attainment of recent years at home and abroad, the thesis makes extensive analysis and exploration on the representation of grammatical meanings in translation. Several highlights of the thesis are as follows:First is the application of the contrastive study. (i) The combination of micro study and macro study. By comparing the language characters of English and Chinese (i.e. language typology and syntactic structure) and their respective thought patterns (see Chapter 2) , we can tell similarities from differences between them. That provides guidance for seeking common ground while reserving differences in translation. Thereby the translation quality will be improved. (ii) The combination of particularity and universality. On the basis of language universals, the contrastive studies of this thesis on the one hand, mainly take English grammatical theories for reference, such as the discussion of 3.1, 3.2, 3.3, 3.4, on the other hand, take Chinese grammatical rules as main reference, such as the discussion of 3.6 and4.2.Second is the aim of the thesis. (i) The contrastive study makes us know better about their language property and it clearly illustrates the significance of their structural particularity and universality in translation. (ii) The application of various linguistic theories (i.e. contrastive linguistics, cognitive linguistics, functional linguistics, etc.) to the thesis provides many theoretical supports for translation study and practice. (iii...