A Report On Non-subject Sentences Translation Of National Emergency Plan For Maritime Search And Rescue

Research on translation of maritime laws and regulations in China is still in its infancy. From the perspective of all the practical conditions, the scope and achievements of the research couldn’t harmonize with the social and economic development, far lagging behind the pace of the globalization process in China. As China has been constantly involved with the international community, it is imperative and of great urgency to translate maritime laws and regulations accurately to introduce China’s policies to other countries. However, the Chinese language differs from its English counterpart greatly in their structures, for instance, there are seldom non-subject sentences seen in English texts while they are commonly used in Chinese ones, which cause great difficulty and trouble to the translation of these non-subject sentences from Chinese to English. It has been a great difficulty in the process of this translation practice to precisely understand the non-subject sentences in Chinese and translate them into English in accordance with the grammar standards and ways of expression of English. Therefore, this report studies the strategies in translating non-subject sentences based on the translation of the "National Emergency Plan for Maritime Search and Rescue" and resorting to Eugene Nida’s functional equivalence theory in translation. It sums up the methods of translating Chinese non-subject sentences into English ones by analyzing the differences between the structures of Chinese and English languages. The strategies of using passive structures, applying" ’there be’ sentence pattern", choosing proper nouns or pronouns to fill up the subject, transforming the non-subject composition to subject composition, using "It+ be+ predicative+ to do sth./that clause" sentence patterns, translating them into the form of phrases and imperative sentences are applied in this report to translate non-subject sentences.