Methods For Translating English Parentheses Into Chinese From The Perspective Of Cohesion And Coherence

This commentary is a translation practice report.The translator has chosen to work with an excerpt from the book Understanding and Preventing Violence:Human Destruction to study the methods applied in translating English parentheses in social psychology text.Published in 2000,this book is a part of the Pacific Institute’s series on forensic psychology,which examines the trend of violence from an individual to a global level,attempts to understand and prevent violence,explores the influence of sexual and death anxiety on human psychology,deeply studies the reasons and motives behind destructive behaviors,and provides solutions to the increasing phenomenon of destructive behaviors.Parentheses are common in English and are used to supplement,explain,give examples,and summarize information within a sentence.Chinese is a parataxis language and lacks obvious cohesive ties,i.e.overt coherence,while English uses various means of cohesion to mark grammatical relations between words or clauses,i.e.overt coherence.In contrast,Chinese uses implicit cohesion to organize discourse and unify form with meaning.The use of parentheses in Chinese is less frequent than in English and may interrupt the flow of the text.In the process of English-Chinese translation,parenthesis,in despite that it is in a subordinate position,is not easy for translators to deal with.If it is ignored,it will easily lead to the loss of semantic and discourse meaning,causing difficulty for readers to understand the whole text.Considering the stylistic and cultural differences of Chinese and English,translators must make adjustments to conform to Chinese expression habits and achieve cohesion.The selected translated text contains a large number of parentheses.The differences in parenthesis usage between the Chinese and English languages as well as between the stylistic and cultural differences between the two languages make the translation of parentheses a tough challenge.Therefore,this commentary focuses on the translation of English parentheses.Based on case study,the commentary provides a detailed analysis of the translation of English parentheses from the perspective of cohesion and coherence.The translation of parentheses greatly affects the coherence and fluency of the translated text,so the quality of the translated text is analyzed from the perspective of cohesion and coherence theory.The commentary also discusses methods and skills for translating English parentheses in different situations and summarizes translation techniques used in practice,including retaining the original position,embedding,inversion,and splitting.To ensure the accuracy of translation,the translator also made full use of various network resources and consulted with her supervisor and classmates.In conclusion,this commentary discusses the translation of English parentheses,that is,how to effectively transform English parenthesis into fluent Chinese expressions.The translated text should not only convey the meaning of the original accurately,but also read smoothly and authentically,enabling readers to better comprehend the knowledge and logical arguments presented in the original text.