Conversion In English-Chinese Translation Of Technical Texts

English is substantially different from Chinese in syntactic construction,lexical selection,meaning expression and the ways of logical thinking,which requires that translators shouldn't translate the text word by word and make some conversions in English-Chinese translation practices in order to make the translation coherent,expressive and readable.Another reason of making a conversion is that English parts of speech and Chinese parts of speech are not completely equivalent.Some English parts of speech can't be found in Chinese,so it needs translators to make some conversions.Conversion of parts of speech is an important conversion type and it is both a way of syntactic and lexical transformation,and it has broadened the channels of extending the semantic correspondence in English and Chinese and has played an important role in English-Chinese translation practices.The thesis has discussed the application of conversion in English-Chinese translation of technical texts from the perspective of substitution.To be specific,this thesis has analyzed the main mechanisms,reasons,and their effectiveness of conversion profoundly and systematically based on the English-Chinese translation corpus—Fuel Trends in Route Buses;the Impact on Vehicle Package Design.The thesis' s four research findings are as follows:First,in order to make the translation conform to the Chinese expression habits and make it more authentic,it's not necessary to stick to the surface structure when translating and for translators they can convert some parts of speech in the source text into other parts of speech in the target text.In the process of the text translation,the thesis summarizes two main conversion mechanisms,which includes conversion of English notional words and conversion of English function words.The former one includes conversion of nouns,verbs,adverbs,adjectives,pronouns and the latter one mainly includes conversion of prepositions.Second,in the conversion of English notional words,nouns conversion is given top priority and adjectives conversion,verbs conversion,adverbs conversion are following and the last one is pronouns conversion.English belongs to static language and it uses more nouns with the largest application amount.So the usage amount of nouns conversion is also put first.Adjectives,adverbs and verbs often need converting in the process of translation.As for pronouns conversion,it is relatively less.Third,prepositions normally need converting into verbs.Each clause in English can only use one finite verb and if in need of other verbs,it can only use the predicate forms and some nouns or prepositions transformed from verbs.As a result,prepositions are often converted into verbs in English-Chinese translation.Fourth,through different conversions among parts of speech,translators are able to flexibly convert some parts of speech in the source text into other parts of speech in the target text so that the translation can be fluent,smooth and clear,reflecting all the information of the source text.Therefore,the thesis' s study on conversion of parts of speech could not only make translators have a better understanding of source texts,but also help them improve their own translation skills to ensure quality of translation.