ABSTRACT

English and Chinese belong to two different language systems, so they have distinct features in language structures. Among these features, one should be mentioned first: English sentences are hypotactic while Chinese sentences are paratactic. English attributive clauses are a typical example of hypotaxis. However, there are no attributive clauses in Chinese sentences. In most cases, attributes used in Chinese sentences are short and concise. For this reason, in the process of translating English attributive clauses into Chinese, it is not likely to make every word equivalent. Thus, sentence structures must be flexibly chosen on the basis of specific contexts when translating English attributive clauses into Chinese. In this paper, the translation of attributive clause is discussed from two perspectives: function and grammar. On the basis of theories of functional translation, massive examples in the paper are taken to analyze different translation methods of attributive clauses to summarize the law of translation and I hope that it will be helpful to those who are interested in the contrastive study of English and Chinese.

Key Words：Functional Translation；English-Chinese Translation；English Attributive Clauses; Hypotaxis vs. Parataxis

CONTENTS

摘要

Abstract

1 The Essential Differences between English and Chinese-1

1.1 The Syntactic Structures and Expressive Features of English and Chinese-1

1.2 A Contrastive Study on English and Chinese Attributive-3

2 The Application of Functional Translation Theory in the Chinese Translation of Attributive Clauses-4

2.1 An Overview of Functional Translation Theory-4

2.2 The Chinese Translation of English Attributive Clauses from the Functional Perspective-5

2.2.1 The Translation of the Restrictive Attributive Clause-5

2.2.2 The Translation of Non-restrictive Attributive Clause-8

3 The Chinese Translation of English Attributive Clauses from the Grammatical Perspective-10

3.1 Prepositive Location-10

3.2 Postpositive Location-11

3.3 Translating Attributive Clause into Its Main Clause-12

3.4 Translating Attributive Clause into Adverbial Clause-13

3.5 Translating Attributive Clause into Explanatory Clause-14

Conclusion-16

References-17

Acknowledgements-18