Strategies For Translating Referring Expressions From English To Chinese:A Report On The Translation Of Authors,Users And Pirates:Convright Law And Subjectivity

Copyright has been a hot topic in the international community of content industry as it is related to culture,entertainment,literature and every other aspect of our life.Now in the digitalized age,factors involved in copyright mount to such an extent that it becomes hard to define copyright infringement.The translation of materials related to copyright law can raise Chinese readers’ awareness of this subject.This translation report is based on the present author’s Chinese translation of Authors,Users and Pirates:Copyright Law and Subjectivity written by James Meese.The source text features flexible use of various referring expressions.Clear referential relations help readers to understand the text.But the source language and the target language see different use of referring expressions,which makes the translation of referential expressions a difficulty.Therefore,the present report is dedicated to discussing the translation strategies for referring expressions,particularly personal pronouns and demonstratives.Under the guidance of Mira Ariel’s accessibility theory,the present author studies the accessibility of referring expressions’antecedents and reviews the differences of accessibility markers used between English texts and Chinese texts.Chinese high accessibility markers include demonstratives in subject positions,zero pronouns,and personal pronouns.Mid accessibility markers are represented by personal pronouns and demonstratives in non-subject positions.Low accessibility markers include proper names,definite descriptions and so on.On this basis,the author has summarized the following translation strategies.First,there are two approaches to translating personal pronouns:(1)using high accessibility markers of the target language;and(2)using low accessibility markers of the target language.Second,there are three approaches to translating demonstratives:(1)using mid accessibility markers of the target language;(2)using high accessibility markers of the target language;and(3)clarification.As the report is based on the translation practice of a legal text,the applicability of its conclusions to other text genres needs to be testified.It is still hoped that this translation report is able to promote,to some extent,the study of English-Chinese translation of referring expressions.