Chapter OneINTRODUCTION
1.1 Background of the Translation Practice
With the development of China’s opening to the outside world, English learningplays an increasingly important role. If we consider the word as the basis of Englishstudy, grammar will be a crucial link to English learning. In China, English grammarbooks are quite complicated, which is merely suitable for learners who have a goodcommand of English. As a result, it is necessary to find a grammar book for any levelsof English learners. The book, A Student’s Introduction to English Grammar, adoptsdescriptive methods and is more legible for first-learners.
There are three translation reports about this book in CNKI: An E-C TranslationReport on A Student’s Introduction to English Grammar (Chapters 1-2); AnEnglish-Chinese Translation Report on A Student’s introduction to English grammar(Chapter 4); An E-C Translation Report on A Student’s Introduction to Englishgrammar (Chapters 6-7). And then the translator gives up these chapters, choosing thesource text from the rest of the chapters as a part of Chapter 3 Verbs, tense, aspect,and mood. Selected translation not only makes translation task more targeted, but alsomakes readers easily find the contents that they want to acquire.
The translation practice started in August, 2020 and the translation report startedon September 17th, 2020.
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1.2 Significance of the Translation Practice
On the one hand, the source text is a linguistic grammar book, which is differentfrom other kinds of grammar books. Compared with traditional grammar books, thebook pays more attention to knowledge comprehension, which leads readers to figureout grammar points step by step. And the source text has abundant examples andexercises to help English learners to understand grammar points. In addition, the bookmakes a lot of comparisons between the points which are easy to be confused, such as3rd singular present and plain present, plain present and plain form, etc. It isworthwhile to do translation practice for the book, which can let more and morepeople know and use the book to improve English ability. On the other hand, thetranslation practice can give other translation workers good enlightenment that thegrammar book is a fairly good source text to practice translation, which can not onlyimprove translation ability but also make writing more accurate.
The book is written by two authors, Rodney D. Huddleston and Geoffrey K.Pullum jointly. Rodney D. Huddleston who is a British linguist and grammarian wasborn on April 4th, 1937. Rodney is good at English study and description and hisrepresentative work is The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language whichshows an elaborate English descriptive grammar. In 1960, Rodney graduated fromCambridge. In 1963, He got his doctorate in Edinburgh and then went to theQueensland University in 1969 (Net. 1.). The other author Geoffrey K. Pullum is theprincipal author of the book The Cambridge Grammar of the English Languagepublished in 2002. He was born in Scotland, on 8 March 1945. When he was young,he left the Scotland and went to England. In 1972, Geoffrey graduated from YorkUniversity. In 1976, he got a doctor’s degree at University College London.
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Chapter TwoTRANSLATION PROCESS
2.1 Preparations before Translation
Christiane Nord puts forward the concept of functionality and loyalty,emphasizing that the translator should not only be responsible for the target languageenvironment and target language readers, but also responsible for the sponsor of thesource text (Huang, 2012, p. 73). Before translation, it is necessary to make sufficientpreparations, including make a brief understanding of two languages and preparationsbefore translation is considered as things that we need to do before using target text toexpress source text, which could help the source text be understood more quickly andthe source text be expressed more correctly. Besides, only by making sufficientpreparations can we have a high-quality translation version. The preparation could bepided in two parts: formality and informality. The formal preparation means thedaily knowledge we got and the informal one means searching for the knowledge ofthe source text’s background and target language’s background purposefully. As forinformal translation, it is essential to make a text analysis, including grammaticalanalysis and stylistic analysis. The grammatical analysis means we need to know thestructure of the sentence, whether a simple sentence or a complex sentence (Wang,2014). After doing former procedures, it turns to analyze source text, search paralleltexts and select translation tools.
2.1.1 Analysis of the source text
The source text is chosen from chapter 3 in the book, which mainly introducesverb inflection, finite and non-finite clauses, auxiliary verbs, perfective andimperfective interpretations, and primary tense. Good translation should conform tothree standards: Firstly, the target text should convey the entire meaning of the sourcetext and not distort the source text; Secondly, the target text should use a normlanguage to express the content of source text; Thirdly, the target text should keep theoriginal style (Chen, 2004, p. 2). All in all, keeping these three points in mind is aneffective way to reappear the style of the source text.
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2.2 Translation Difficulties
Features of the book are similar to textbooks, which have plentiful terminologiesand rigorous structures. Terminology are also named technical words, which mean thesystem of terms belonging or peculiar to a science, art, or specialized subject, so thiskind of the source text do not need to give the target text excessive modification.Actually, it is worthwhile to make a full understanding of the source text and figureout each terminology’s meaning and terminology’s equal expression, convey thecorrect meanings. If we do not understand terminologies, mistranslation will appear.As such, it is vital to read the source text thoroughly, refer to dictionaries, and searchthe parallel texts. Besides terminologies, common words are difficult points fortranslating. Common words may have different meanings, so the selection of words’meaning is arduous. And the grammar book has a lot of abbreviation words, whichneed to find their complete expression. Meanwhile, syntactic level exists severaldifficulties, such as long and complex sentences and long attributive-clauses. It isquite necessary to read sentence combined with contexts again and again, refer torelevant books, and ask teachers or other classmates.
Newmark (2001:140) maintains that: “translation is an endless procedure, exceptin the case of ‘performative’ statements. Other translations can never be finished, onlylaid aside.” As a result, if we want to acquire a sound translation version, revisionafter translation is necessary. Revision after translation mainly includes three parts:Firstly, check for spelling and punctuation mistakes by software GRAMMARLY toensure translation quality. Secondly, examine interlingual errors and semanticdeviations in the translation. Thirdly, find better expressions to substitute the formerinappropriate expressions. After these three stages of correction, the translationbecomes more legible and valuable.
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3.1 Methods at the Lexical Level.......................................8
3.1.1 Addition...........................................8
3.1.2 Omission..................................10
3.1.3 Extension of word meaning...................................12
Chapter Four CONCLUSION.............................................. 19
4.1 Translation Experience....................................................19
4.2 Limitations of the Translation............................... 20
4.3 Suggestions for Further Research.........................................20
Chapter ThreeTRANSLATION METHODS FOR DIFFICULTIES
3.1 Methods at the Lexical Level
Word by word translation can not express the complete meaning of the sourcetext. Hence, adopting suitable translation methods is valuable. This part takes methodsas addition, omission and extension of the word meaning to make sentences concreteand clear.
3.1.1 Addition
In order to make the target text grammatically right, logically acceptable,rhetorically good, culturally appropriate, and semantically clear, the translator addednecessary words. Accordingly, the supplied must be indispensable syntactically,semantically, stylistically, and contextually ( Lian, 2006, p. 129).Cases about addition are stated as follows:
Example 1
ST: With one isolated exception that we take up in 8.4, primary forms showinflectional distinctions of tense (preterite vs present) and can occur as the sole verb ina canonical clause. Secondary forms have no tense inflection and cannot occur as thehead of a canonical clause (Huddleston & Pullum, 2005, p. 30).
TT： 除了在 8.4 中提到的一个特例外，主要形式动词展示了时态的屈折变化差异（过去 vs 现在），并且能够成为典型句中的唯一动词。次要形式动词不含时态的屈折变化，且不能作为典型句的中心词。
For nouns have no plural form and verbs have no change of tense in Chinese,there are many differences in word usage, structure of sentence, and expressionbetween English and Chinese languages. In many situations, words need to be addedwhen doing translation from English to Chinese. However, translators can not addwords at random. Usually the supplementary words may not appear in the source textbut have concrete meaning. Hence, to make readers comprehend this sentence, thetranslator adds the potential meaning to the target language. The subject in thesentence is “ primary forms ”, the predict is “show” and the object is “inflectionaldistinctions of tense”. As we know, “ primary forms ” can not match with the object.And in the latter sentence, the sentence said primary forms can occur as the sole verbin a canonical clause. As a result, we should add information in this sentence to makeit intact.
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Chapter FourCONCLUSION
4.1 Translation Experience
In general, the process of translation is full of challenge and enjoyment. Thesource text is a grammar book that prefers to the field of linguistics and uses a lot ofterminologies and complicated sentences. There are three lessons from the translationpractice on grammar. Firstly, sufficient preparations before translation are helpful totranslation, especially collecting high-quality parallel texts and searchingterminologies. And doing this kind of translation texts can improve capacity ofcollecting data and master a lot of useful knowledge about linguistics. Secondly,grammar learning easily make people in a stiff state and learn grammar by rote in thepast, so translating the book on grammar can make a further understanding ofgrammar and acquire a better writing capacity. Thirdly, the source text is a descriptivegrammar book and its target readers are lack of good foundation of English grammar,so it is hard to find a suitable style to correspond to the source text during thetranslation process. And, the source text has a bulk of terminologies and complicatedsentences. Accordingly, it is necessary to find a lot of skills and methods to solvethese difficulties encountered in translation. Methods as omission, addition, andextension of word meaning are used at the lexical level and methods as pision，attributive postposition, and restructuring are used at the syntactic level. Thesemethods can provide a relative reference for the future translation of the same kind.
There are lots of limitations in the translation practice. Firstly, limited by theunique style of the source text, the translation can not embody all translation methods.Secondly, the connotation of terminologies is not mastered remarkably, so there issome deficiency in terminology illustration. Thirdly, due to the otherness of twolanguages, sometimes translation fails to gauge the quality. The expression in thereport is poor and the translation language may be redundant.
reference(omitted)