中式英语之鉴读书笔记1

小瓜茵

Reading Notes
One of Chinglish's unnecessary words is the words of nouns and verbs that make no difference from the original meaning. eg.
A. to accelerate the pace of economic reform
B. to accelerate economic reform
(to accelerate = to increase the pace of)
n.=> Deletion of category words
Category words are words used to express the categories of behavior, phenomenon and attribute in Chinese. For example, the category word in "unemployment problem" is "problem", that is, unemployment is a kind of problem. eg.
A. promoting the cause of peaceful reunification
B. promoting peaceful reunification(peaceful reunification is a career)
v.=> Mostly in phrase form
1. unnec. Verb + noun: Change to the strong verb eg.
They should conduct a careful
B. promoting peaceful reunification(peaceful reunification is a career)
v.=> Mostly in phrase form
1. unnec. Verb + noun: Change to the strong verb eg.
A. they should conduct a careful examination ...
B. they should carefully examine ...
2, unnec. Verb +unnec. Noun + other words eg.
A. our troops used the method of slow advance
B. our troops advanced slowly
A little thought: "strong verbs" and "weak verbs"
For example, make contributions is a weak verb and has no practical meaning, while contributions have a real meaning and contribute is a strong verb.
Generally speaking, there are only a few weak verbs, the common ones are make, do, be, give, have...... Easy to distinguish
There are a number of "weak verb + strong verb nominalization" combinations in the book, and the author's suggestion is to change to a more concise strong verb (e.g., to have respect for => to respect).
But this change seems to be different from the translation skills you have been learning. How to look at this problem?
There is a basic knowledge of Chinese-English translation: Chinese is dynamic, English is static. The teacher also taught us to use nouns flexibly in English writing. How come in this book, foreigners don't say so?
Now that I think about it, the two are not in conflict. Foreign native expressions are to avoid long weak verb expressions and replace them with concise verbs. Therefore, in our interpretation practice and translation practice in different fields, we also follow this principle.
However, since the CATTI exam materials are mainly political and economic discourse, and the speeches of leaders and government work reports are learning materials, the Chinese-English translation tends to export English in the official style, which can be understood as "intentional". For example, "We are going to reform the economic system" would say "We will carry out.
economic reforms "instead of" we will reform."
This practice of introducing weak verbs (verb transitions), on the one hand, will appear more written (mostly used in government documents), on the other hand, in line with our official discourse style. The use of verb transitions is rarely recommended in other fields of translation.
In short, translation does not have to be confined to the skill itself, a translation skill does not apply to all texts and situations, the style of the dispute is not conclusive, and translation screws still need to read more and practice more experience.