A Practice Report On The E-C Translation Of Attributive Clauses In Exploring Engineering(Excerpts)

With the rapid development of modern science and technology,studying scientific English text has becoming more and more extensive.English for science and technology is not greatly different from general English in form,except that its content involves the principles and knowledge of science and technology,which thus makes it apparently professional.When translating such texts,translators should not only have good translation competence between English and Chinese,but also have a good understanding and mastery of the professional knowledge involved.Only in this way can the translation be faithful to the original texts,and the expression be more professional and authentic,Meanwhile,it is in line with the expectation and expression habits of the target language readers.This report chooses the first four chapters as translation practice materials,so as to explore the attributive clause translation strategies under the guidance of Vermeer’s Skopos Theory of Translation.Based on the previous studies on translating attributive clauses from English into Chinese,this report summarizes the translation strategies concerned,namely,the pre-attributive method,the post-attributive method,the fusion method,the conversion method and the synthesis method.If the attributive clause modifies and defines the antecedent firmly,the pre-attributive method is generally used.For attributive clauses with long expression and complex sentence pattern,post-attributive method is generally adopted to translate attributive clauses into parallel clauses to avoid lengthy attributive clauses.When the main clause and subordinate clause are closely related and the antecedent form a logical subject-predicate or verb-object relationship with the subordinate clause,the fusion method can be used to translate the main sentence and clause into one sentence.When attributive clauses represent logical relations such as condition and cause and effect,they can be translated into clauses representing logical relations with the conversion method.The synthesis method is applicable to complex long sentences.When there is more than one attributive clause in the sentence,multiple translation methods can be combined.In the translation of scientific English texts,the translator’s translation ability is of great importance,but the accumulation of professional knowledge should not be ignored.Only by combining translation and specialty can the translation occur in the way expected by the target language readers,so that the readers can understand the content conveyed by scientific English texts and create greater value than the translation itself.The research on the translation of attributive clauses in scientific and technological English texts can further broaden the exploration angle for the research and development of comprehensive translation disciplines,and play a due role in the development of national science and technology.