Ratio Of Characters And Words And The Grammatical Awareness In Translation Of Chinese Classics

As we all known,lexicon and grammar are interwoven closely with each other.Thus,the certain control on numbers of English words tends to make some effects on translation.In this paper,we introduce RCW in the teaching of Chinese classics translation to study the relationship between the change of RCW(within a certain range)and the mistakes made by college students in their translation samples.RCW is the ratio of characters and words.For example,In the Chinese saying学而时习之xué_ér_shí_xí_zhī“learn and review from time to time”,there are five Chinese characters.Ku’s translation is“to acquire knowledge and,as you go on acquiring,to put into practice what you have acquired”(1898),while Legge’s translation is“to learn with a constant perseverance and application”(1893/1971).There are 17 English words in Ku’s translation and 8 in Legge’s translation,so the RCW is 3.40 and 1.60 respectively.In translation teaching class,under the guide of RCW,all students are asked to translate Chinese classics and divided into two parts,one without RCW requirement and one with certain RCW requirement(over 1.80).Then,we started to collect and analyze the grammatical mistakes in these translation samples.Through the data comparison and analysis,it is concluded that the appropriate increase of RCW brings both positive and negative grammatical effects in students’ translation samples.On one hand,within a certain range of RCW,from 1.50 to 2.00,the number of grammatical mistakes decreases and the grammatical awareness of students is improved.On the other hand,the rise of RCW also causes some negative influence in translation,such as the overuse of article and the increase of spelling mistakes.What is more,the specific categories of grammatical mistakes made by students in their translation samples are not directly associated with RCW and the main categories of grammatical mistakes are mistakes on verb,mistakes on article,mistakes on sentence connection and mistakes on formulaic language.Generally speaking,the increase of RCW can improve the grammatical awareness of students and make some positive effects on translation and the introduction of the index provides a new method for the teaching of Chinese classics translation.