thecomparisonbetweeneandcandthecountermeasuresinthetranslationfromenglishtochinese

The Comparison between English and Chinese and the

countermeasures in the translation from English to Chinese

English and Chinese belong to two different language families:

English, the Indo-European family and Chinese, the Sin-Tibetan family.

The two languages also have different cultural backgrounds: Western and

Chinese. So I would like to list ten aspects which comparison between

English and Chinese.

1. Synthetic vs. Analytic

English is a synthetic language which characterized by frequent and

systematic use of inflected forms to express grammatical relationships.

The three grammatical devices in building English sentences are

inflection, word order and the use of function words.

Chinese is an analytic language which marked by a relatively frequent

use of function words, auxiliary verbs, and changes in word order to

express syntactic relations rather than of inflected form.

2. Inflectional vs. Non-inflectional

In English, nouns, pronouns, and verbs are inflected. Such grammatical

meanings as parts of number, person, tense, voice can be especially

expressed by the use of inflected form with or without the help of function

words and word order.

In Chinese, the above grammatical meanings are mostly implied in

contexts or between the lines, though often with the help of word order

and function words. .

(1).Function words:

Thus encouraged, they made a still bolder plan for the next year.

(由于)受到了这样的鼓励，他们为第二年制定了一个更大胆的计划。 (2).Word order:

He astonished us by the rapidity of his movements.

我们对他的快速行动感到惊讶。

3. English and Chinese Make use of Different Types of Function Words

English function words include the articles, prepositions, auxiliary

verbs, coordinators and subordinators Chinese function words include

particles, connectives, and prepositions.

(1)The extensive use of English articles poses a big problem for

translation.

. She was with a child. 她带着一个孩子。

She was with child. 她怀着孕。

(2).English has a large number of prepositions which are often in use,

while Chinese has a few prepositions which are mostly “borrowed” from

their corresponding verbs. A conversion of English prepositions into

Chinese verbs is often necessary.

. Peter drew his knife on the robber.

彼得拔刀向那个强盗砍去。

(3)English frequently uses its various connectives, coordinating or

subordinating, including conjunctive and relative pronouns or adverbs,

Such as who, whom, whose, that, what, which, when, where, why, and how.

Chinese has no such kind of conjunctives and relatives, and other

connectives are not often used, except in formal writings.

. Practically all substances expand when heated and contract when cooled.

几乎所有的物质都是热胀冷缩的。

(4)Chinese is rich in particles， which can be classified into aspect

particles, structural particles, and emotional particles。

. 1) 这回我可亲眼看见啦！（感叹语气） This time I’ve actually seen it myself.

2)打吧，打不下去了；跑吧，跑不了，敌人只好投降了。（假设语气）

Unable to fight on or to escape, the enemy was forced to surrender.

4. Intonation vs. Tone

English is an intonation while Chinese is a tone language

5. Rigid vs. Supple

English sentence structure is composed of known phrase(s) and verb

phrase(s).It has become an invariable custom to have a subject before a

verb and therefore a sentence that dose not contain a subject and a verb

is felt to be incomplete. The subject(s) must agree with the predicate

verb (v) in person and number, etc. This rigid S-V concord forms the kernel

of a sentence. There can be reduced to fire basic patterns: SV, SVP, SVO,

SVoO, and SVOC.

English sentences can be summarized as these five patterns or their

variants, expansion, combination, omission, or inversion.

Chinese is relatively free from the government of S-V concord and formal

markers. The subject –predicate structure is usually varied, flexible

and therefore complicated and supple.

.:他有个女儿，（）在北京工作，（）已经打电话去了，（）听说明天就能回来。

He has a daughter who works in Beijing. Someone has phones her and it

is said that she will be back tomorrow.

6. Hypotactic vs. Paratactic

English sentence building is featured by Hypotaxis. Hypotaxis is the

dependent or subordinate construction or relationship of clauses with

connectives, for example, I shall despair if you don not come. To clarify

the relation between words, phrases or clauses. English more often resorts

to overt cohesion, frequently using various cohesive ties such as