A Report On The English-Chinese Translation Of Inanimate Subjects In The Senior John Samuel Swire(1825-98) Management In Far Eastern Shipping Trades(Excerpt)

As one of the important oceanic powers,China promotes vigorously the B&R and extensively participates in international maritime activities witn the aim to make an economic giant in ocean.Translation should aiaswer the call of our times by introducing international maritime cultures and management skills in shipping company.This practice report will shoulder such a responsibility on the basis of the abridged translation of the Senior John Samuel Swire(1825-98)Management in Far Eastern Shipping Trades.As a part of maritime historical documents,its language is characterized with widespread expression of inanimate subjects to demonstrate itself objective and intriguing.Inanimate subjects is rendered as a unique linguistic phenomenon in English for frequent use of lifeless nouns or phrases in subject position,while animate subjects to describe subjective feelings are frequent expression in Chinese.Therefore,this report will make an analysis and summary of the Chinese translation strategies of English inanimate subjects to enhance the readability of the translation.First,based on the research of forerunners,a definition and targeted classification are offered to work out.Then,for keeping the original flavor of the source text and adapting to the target readers’ preference,classic example of sentences are analysed under the guidance of functional Skopos theory:skopos rule,coherence rule and fidelity rule.Finally,five translation methods for inanimate subject are applied in the process:translation in regular sequence,conversion,omission,division and comprehensive method.the common material nouns should be translated literally;subjects of abstract material nouns,nominalization nouns should be applied with literal translation,conversion and splitting methods;arid subjects in passive sentences should be converted into other parts of the sentence;subjects such as ’it’ and ’there’ should be omitted while the semantic subjects are translated into grammatical subjects;the subjects with long and complicated attributive clauses should be accompanied with splitting or combining methods.This practice report not only provides reference for future research on the translation of inanimate subjects,but also promotes the nationwide awareness of navigation and ocean,and the dissemination of maritime culture.