On Translating Parallel Structures: A Report On The Translation Of The Second Mountain: The Quest For A Moral Life(Excerpts)

This report is a summary of the translation of The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life,a philosophical novel.Its author,David Brooks,compares life to two mountains through metaphorical expressions.The first mountain metaphorically refers to marital pursuits,while the second focuses on the pursuit at the spiritual level.Rich in its quotations,flexible in its structure,beautiful in its expressions,and philosophical in its ideas,the book provides its readers enlightenment.The author chooses Chapter 16-21 as the ST,and reflects on the whole translating process seriously.Through the translation and reflection,the author finds that parallel structures used 248 times are exactly the difficult point in the ST.Then,by analyzing the translations of parallel structures,the author summarizes the features of parallel structures and corresponding translation skills so as to make modest contributions to parallel structure translation.Firstly,the author classifies parallel structures in the ST into four categories: parallel words,parallel phrases,parallel clauses and parallel sentences.Then,the author takes as examples several typical cases to make a thorough analysis of parallel structures from each category.Analysis is split into three aspects: presenting modes,translating thoughts of parallel structures and reflections on the whole process.Through the practice,the translator has acquired the following three major findings: 1)Parallel structures are usually accompanied by obvious or hidden markers,and parallel elements are in the same forms and grammatical functions;2)The translation of parallel structure is based on the principle that parallel elements should be given “equal weight” in the TT;3)On translating this,the translator should repeat the marker firstly,then tries to keep the parallel elements in the TT in the same number and in a balanced structure according to the context.To be specific,parallel words and parallel phrases are usually rendered into two-syllable or four-syllable phrases,while the translations of parallel clauses and sentences retain the original flavor by repeating the markers and seeking for equal words and balanced structures.