A Study of Seniors of Applied English in Their Approaches to Problems of Correspondence in English-Chinese Translation

Abstract

Based on 56 Chinese versions of a specifically selected English sentence, the present study aims to investigate how senior students of applied English tackle word and syntactic correspondence in English-Chinese translation. With respect to one-to-three word correspondence, data analysis shows that only 18 (32%) of the students translated the English word ”significant” into three corresponding Chinese words, 19 (34%) of the students provided other non-relevant Chinese versions, while 19 (34%) students did not turn out any Chinese translation at all. As regards one-to-Φ word correspondence, 31 students (55.3%) did not translate ”refer” into Chinese at all, 10 (18%) applied otherwise acceptable Chinese words, and 15(26.7%) provided other non-relevant Chinese versions. Concerning one-to-one syntactic correspondence, 6 (10.8%) turned out syntactically corresponding Chinese phrases, 1 (1.8%) provided a Chinese phrase utilizing a modified yet more fluent Chinese construction, while 49 (87.4%) turned out Chinese phrases whose syntactic constructions were different from both. As to one-to-Φ syntactic correspondence, 3 (7.2%) borrowed the English syntactic construction, 1 (1.8%) provided a Chinese phrase following standard Chinese usage, while 52 (92.80%) neither borrowed the English syntactic construction nor followed the Chinese usage. Overall, most students neither borrowed an English feature nor used a modified Chinese usage where there is no correspondence. Nor did they adopt an appropriate corresponding Chinese feature where there was correspondence. They were found to translate the English sentence into Chinese based mainly on their own preference and judgment, being ignorant of translation techniques. As a result, they turned out a lot of awkward, unreadable and even incomprehensible Chinese versions.