Translation Of Parenthesis

The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life is a social science book written by David Brooks,a columnist working for The New York Times.With lucid and profound language,this book tells a story of two mountains that everyone needs to climb in life.The first mountain is one that the whole society or culture requires everyone to climb – individual achievements.In the pursuit of self-fulfillment,one's value would be affirmed by society,but as a result,one may become unhappy and insensitive.Therefore,the individual has to begin the journey of climbing the second mountain which mainly refers to the pursuit of personal true joy.In this book,the second mountain has the following four main aspects: vocation,marriage,philosophy and faith,and community.The first chapter of this book was selected for translation.In this chapter,parenthesis exists everywhere.A large number of parentheses are used to narrate stories.As the author read this book,she took notes on all parentheses and tried to classify them into four types: parenthesis with semantic function,parenthesis with evidential function,parenthesis with cohesive function,and parenthesis with rhetorical function.This kind of classification is based on the function of parenthesis.Both English parenthesis and Chinese parenthesis have similar functions while the usage of parenthesis in these two languages differs to some extent,so it is necessary to translate English parenthesis into different linguistic forms according to Chinese writing habits.According to different types of parentheses that appeared in this book,the following methods of translation are summarized after finishing the translation project.Firstly,translators can keep the position of parenthesis unchanged.Secondly,parenthesis can be relocated in the target text in terms of the characteristics of thetarget language.Thirdly,parenthesis can be translated with dashes.Fourthly,translators can restructure parenthesis with the rest part of a sentence.Fifthly,brackets can be employed to translate parenthesis.Finally,some proper words can be added to introduce parenthesis.In the process of translation,the author attempts to pursue functional equivalence and translate different parentheses into the corresponding target language according to the context.