A Study Of Nominalized Restructuring In Translating Technical Texts From The Perspective Of Grammatical Metaphor

Since the introduction of carbon peaking and carbon neutrality objectives,China has been accelerating the development of its green industry chain and carbon emissions permits trading(CEPT)markets.The project text at issue in this report is chosen from Research on Carbon Emissions Trading Efficiency and Corporate Decisions for Emissions Reduction,a new book published as an integrated research result of several NNSFC projects.A systematic analysis of the CEPT markets development is made in the book,which stands at the forefront of the field and is of great significance to the development of the industry at home and abroad.Guided by Halliday’s grammatical metaphor theory,this report,taking the translation practice of the preface and the first chapter of the book as a case,analyzes techniques for translating nominalized structures from the perspective of grammatical metaphor.Grammatical metaphors include conceptual and interpersonal metaphors,the former being the focus of this report thanks to its higher frequency.As the most important means of grammatical metaphor is “nominalization”,the importance of converting non-nominalized structures in the source text to nominalized structures and “metaphorical form” in the target text is firstly analyzed.Nominalizing conversion is classified into three types at the lexical and grammatical level,namely“process nominalization”,“attribute nominalization” and “assessment nominalization”.By analyzing the typical examples that express process,attribute,and assessment in the project text,the conversion from “congruent form” to“metaphorical form” of a nominalized structure is realized.Strategies of such conversion are summarized as a guide to address similar features in C-E translation of specialized technical texts.Targeted at the three types of “nominalization”,three functional advantages of“metaphorical-formed” translation are concluded.First,conversion from dynamic to static and can enhance the information density.Second,conversion from subjective expressions to objective ones can enhance the reliability of the expressions by making them more impersonal.Third,conversion from the congruent form to the metaphorical form while retaining the same semantic and logical relationships helps break the conventional thinking and provides a new perspective for C-E translation of technical texts.It is hoped that this report can illustrate the significance of proper“nominalization” in C-E translation to both translation studies and practices.