Comprehension And Translation Of English Nominalization

The material of this English-Chinese translation practice is excerpted from The Evolution of Language written by W.Tecumseh Fitch,an American biologist and cognitive scientist.As an academic work,the text is concise in language and contains a large number of nominal structures,which are the major barriers for translation.In addition,the differences of nominalization in these two languages also reflect the differences of thinking between English and Chinese.Therefore,this report chooses some typical examples in translation to explore the nominalization and puts forward corresponding translation methods in E-C translation based on the cognitive rules of nominalization.The author analyzes nominalization in view of its structural and semantical level.Firstly,from the perspective of vocabulary and sentence,this report summarizes the structural shift of nominalization and the its contrastive study in English and Chinese.Then,on account of the Ronald W.Langacker’s cognition of nominalization,this report analyzes the meaning changes of nominal structures from the semantic level,and explains the internal laws(the dynamic process is transformed into the static concept)between structural shift and semantic shift of nominalization in detail.Finally,on this basis,the author puts forward corresponding translation methods and strategies for E-C translation of nominalization,in order to improve the author’s cognition of nominalization and lay a foundation for the future translation practice.