Translating Long Relative Clauses Into Chinese In Historical Books

With a heated discussion on indigenous history,environmental history,and river conservation in China in recent years,the translation of historical non-fiction texts has gradually gained more attention.This report aims to highlight research in this area to support domestic research on global environmental protection conflicts and to encourage aspiring translators to enrich non-literary translation further.The author of this report has chosen Heather Goodall’s latest original work in English,Georges River Blues.The book introduces a new critical analysis of the interplay between humanity and the natural world,laying the foundation for widespread awareness of urban environmental protection.This report focuses on the translation of relative clauses.A relative clause is a subordinate clause that typically acts as a post-modifier clause,which usually modifies a noun or noun phrase and often starts with a relative word.It has various forms and functions,and its main function is to be a noun modifier(i.e.,"attributive").However,such a clause can not only serve the function of modifying an antecedent,but also can express other adverbial functions in a specific context.Therefore,the most prominent translation difficulty in the book is how to convey the information embedded in the lengthy and intricate relative clauses in English as much as possible.After referring to the research of many scholars such as Newmark,Cao Minglun,Deng Yunhua,Peng Ping,Jia Dejiang,and Jin Wei,the author of this report concludes that prior research has focused on the English-Chinese translation of the grammatical structure of"attributive clauses" in specific contexts,especially on the long relative clauses,without considering the clause’s functions and content beyond its modifying role.As a result,translation methods are divided according to different criteria,resulting in overlapping methods such as the combination method and the blending method.Guided by the communicative translation theory,this report decides to adopt a different approach by judging the exact meaning,information,function,and role of specific relative clauses in specific contexts from the perspective of semantic logic.The findings try to provide insights and inspire further investigation in future studies.