On Strategies For Translating Negative Sentences From English To Chinese

The translation material is taken from the second chapter of Myth and Reality in the Birth of a Nation written by Godfrey Hodgson.A large number of negative sentences in the text inspire my thinking on how to deal with these negative sentences,thus becoming my translation focus.Every language has its own syntactic and semantic devices expressing negation.However,because of the complexity of negative sentences as well as the huge difference between the English and Chinese languages in expressing negative meaning,challenges are posed for translators to translate English negative sentences into Chinese.This thesis first attempts to outline the definition,classification,a contrast in forms of negation and translation techniques of negative sentences by different scholars in the English language.Then,the case study is applied in this thesis,with cases from my translation.And the author categorizes all negative sentences in the chosen text five groups according to the classification and translating techniques of Huang Yanglou,Zhong Shuneng,and Wu Yongqiang:absolute negation,partial negation,semantic negation and comparative-related negation.Furthermore,the classification of consecutive negation is added to tackle some negative sentences.Ultimately,the translation techniques of negative sentences put forward by Song Chang are applied to discuss how to translate different negative sentences.Through analysis,the author concludes that translating techniques proposed by Huang Yanglou can be adopted in translating negative sentences,and that some new findings are presented:a).The implied meaning of many simple English negative sentences should be presented.b).The double negative structure can be kept in the target language,instead of translating into affirmative sentences.c).The techniques of comparative-related negative sentences are discussed in this thesis.Wu Yongqiang’s translation techniques about comparative-related negation translation appeared more comprehensive so his techniques are applied in this thesis.