Reflections on Chapter1

池无完船

Recently, I have studied Chapter 1 of The Translator's Guide to Chinglish and gained a great deal from it. This book is authored by Joan Pinkham, an American. With her rich translation experience and in-depth research on Chinglish, she reveals the common problems in Chinglish for us.

The first chapter mainly focuses on "redundant words", and this content has made me deeply aware of the potential influence of Chinese thinking on English expression. In our daily English learning and usage, we are often inadvertently affected by Chinese habits and end up writing or speaking English with a strong Chinese flavor. For example, in the sentence "living standards for the people in both urban and rural areas continued to rise", "living standards" inherently implies the living standards of people, so "for the people" is really redundant. After deleting it, the sentence becomes more concise and clear. Another example is "at that time the situation in northeast china was still one where the enemy was stronger than the people's forces". The word "situation" is often redundant in many cases because the clause following it already clearly indicates the specific situation.

Redundant nouns in Chinglish often appear together with articles and prepositions. When deleting redundant nouns, the corresponding articles and prepositions should also be deleted together. In addition, there is a special category of class nouns, such as "the work of planning". "Planning" itself is a kind of "work", and "the work of" can be completely deleted. Redundant verbs are also common problems. For instance, in "make an improvement in our work", "make" is a general and weak word without practical meaning, and the word that really conveys the meaning is "improvement". It can be directly changed to the verb "improve", that is, "improve our work". The most common redundant verbs include "make" and "have", as well as "give", "provide", "carry out" and so on. We should pay special attention to avoid such redundant structures when writing.

This chapter has made me understand that concise and accurate expression is an important pursuit in English learning. We should not simply translate Chinese word by word into English, but rather deeply understand the expression habits and logical thinking of English. In future English learning and translation practice, I will pay more attention to the conciseness of the language, carefully identify and eliminate redundant words, strive to overcome the interference of Chinese thinking, and continuously improve my English expression level. At the same time, I will continue to read the subsequent chapters of this book in depth, looking forward to obtaining more valuable knowledge about avoiding Chinglish and enhancing my English proficiency.