On Translating English Personal Pronouns

The use of personal pronouns is very indispensable in languages.Without personal pronouns,the interpersonal communication and written expression may become burdensome and complicated.The personal pronouns in English and Chinese have gone through a certain course of development,and now have their own characteristics.On the surface,during the process of translation,the forms of English personal pronouns are simple and mostly each of personal pronouns in English has an equivalent one in Chinese so that literal translation can exactly convey the meaning of the original text.However,the fact is not so.The system of English personal pronouns differs from the Chinese one,and the using habits of personal pronouns are different as well.The personal pronouns in Chinese are not used as widely as those in English.In Chinese expression,the subordinate relation can be directly figured out through the context,but it needs to be specified in English,which requires the personal pronouns to play a role.The whole story selected by the author was told from the perspective of the first person,presenting the romance between the male protagonist Olly and the female protagonist “I”,namely Madeline.In the novel,the personal pronouns appear very frequently.Owing to the differences between English and Chinese and the demands of the style of the original text,the translation of English personal pronouns into Chinese pronouns becomes an essential part.For the sake of vivid and nature translation of English personal pronouns,the translator should have a comprehensive understanding on English personal pronouns and Chinese personal pronouns.In this report,the author respectively does a count for the personal pronouns used in the original text and the translated text and then makes a comparative study,showing the use frequency of the personal pronouns in the original text and the translated text.And according to the comparative study,the author discovers that English uses more personal pronouns while Chinese uses less in general and thedifference between the use frequency of the third personal pronouns in the original text and the translated text is biggest.The author does analysis of the two differences.Then,the author summarizes two problems she has encountered during the process of translating the personal pronouns as two aspects: quantity and clarity.Finally,the author provides four methods which are applied by her to translate personal pronouns in this practice,they are ellipsis,literal translation,repetition and substitution.The whole report mainly consists of four parts,namely task description,process description,case study and conclusion.