ABSTRACT

Subject ellipsis in a Chinese sentence is a very common grammatical phenomenon which has a great impact on the Chinese-English translation and has been a focus of the contrastive linguistics and translation studies. There are two main kinds of subject ellipsis in a Chinese sentence: anaphoric ellipsis and cataphoric ellipsis. 

The paper analyzes several forms of subject ellipsis in Chinese and explores the strategies in translating them into English on the basis of a case study of Hong Lou Meng. In the process of translation, we need to first identify the subject omission and fill in the missing subject. Concrete translation strategies like lexical addition and the adjustment of syntactic devices may be employed to make the translated version conform to the syntactic and textual dimensions of the target text. 

Key words：Chinese; subject ellipsis; translation strategies

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

ABSTRACT

摘要

Chapter One  INTRODUCTION-1

Chapter Two  LITERATURE REVIEW-3

2.1 Definition of Subject-3

2.2 Definition of Ellipsis-3

2.3 Previous Studies on Subject Ellipsis in a Chinese Sentence-4

2.4 Previous Studies on Translation Strategies of Subject Ellipsis in a Chinese Sentence-4

Chapter Three  CLASSIFICATION OF SUBJECT ELLIPSIS-6

3.1 Anaphoric Ellipsis of the Subject of a Previous Clause-6

3.2 Anaphoric Ellipsis of the Object of a Previous Clause-7

3.3 Cataphoric Ellipsis-8

Chapter Four  TRANSLATION STRATEGIES OF SUBJECT ELLIPSIS IN A CHINESE SENTENCE-9

4.1 Lexical Devices-9

4.2 Syntactic Devices-10

4.2.1 Using Non-finite Verbs to Translate-10

4.2.2 Using Different Kinds of Clause to Translate-12

Chapter Five  CONCLUSION-14

REFERENCES-16