An Adaptationist Account Of Inserts Translation

As a major feature of English,an insert may interrupt the continuity of the structure and meaning of the sentence so as to convey additional information or the author's attitudes.The differences between English and Chinese inserts bring difficulties and interference to the translator in the process of E-C translation.In translating Pragmatics: A Multidisciplinary Perspective,I found that the author uses lots of inserts.These flexible and versatile inserts play an important role in building a coherent context,adding supplementary information,and accurately expressing the author's opinions.The translation is the carrier of information.Therefore,when translating academic texts,to make the translation more readable,the translator should give full play to his subjectivity,making dynamic choices in the aspects of vocabulary,sentence pattern and discourse,actively adapting to the text genre,language form and reader habits of the target language,so that readers can better achieve their reading goals.This thesis,based on the analysis of the translation of Chapter Eight of the book and guided by the adaptation theory,discusses how to choose translation strategies for handling inserts in the translation of English academic texts.It summarizes five strategies: pre-posing(i.e.,moving the insert to the front of the sentence),integration(i.e.,integrating the inserts into the reorganized structure),zero-processing(i.e.,no adjustment to the word order or expression of the original text),amplification(i.e.,adding extra illustration or clarifying some detail),and punctuation adjustment(i.e.,changing dashes to brackets or commas).It analyzes the principles for using these five methods with examples,and gives a preliminary theoretical explanation.In particular,when a translator chooses a translation method,he should comprehensively consider the semantics and functions of the inserted element in the original text,and consider the way of expression to achieve the rich pragmatic connotation of the insert.Although these strategies are not the only effective ways to achieve dynamic adaptation,they can be helpful for other translators in dealing with inserts in academic texts in the future.