小说翻译论文开题报告

英语专业翻译方向论文开题报告范文

以下是由我整理的.英语专业翻译方向论文的开题报告范文，供大家参考!

How to Deal with Ellipsis in English-Chinese Translation

I. Purpose and Significance

With the development of globalization, the world’s political, economic and cultural communications are becoming increasingly frequent. Therefore, the role of translation cannot be ignored. However, the differences between English and Chinese cultures that are reflected in the two languages pose considerable difficulty.

It is acknowledged that when doing translation one can not translate word for word, or sentence by sentence. Therefore, we must use some translation strategies such as amplification, ellipsis, conversion and so on. Ellipsis as one of the basic translation methods plays an essential role in English-Chinese rendition. Translators apply it in order to make their versions more coherent and understandable.

According to the Oxford Advanced Learner’s English-Chinese Dictionary, ellipsis means leaving out a word or words from a sentence deliberately, when the meaning can be understood without them. Ellipsis in translation does not mean cutting some content from the original articles. What could be omitted are words that are useless in translated works or else they will make the versions redundant or disobey the manner of expression in another language.

Some words and phrases are useless in Chinese but necessary in English. Articles in English are the most significant phenomenon from this aspect. They are very important in English, but we can hardly see any reflection of this part in Chinese. Ellipsis is designed on the basis of faithfulness to the original text, making it more fluent, smooth, concise, thus conforming to idiomatic Chinese. The paper will explore ellipsis in English-Chinese translation from five aspects, which are ellipses of pronouns, conjunctions, articles, prepositions, modifications, so as to achieve smoother and clearer communications among China and English-speaking countries.

II. Literature Review

Long before, some people began to learn other countries’ languages to understand others cultures. In China, Xuanzang was the first translator who not only translated the Sanskrit sutras into Chinese, but introduced the first Chinese writings to foreign countries, making foreigners understand China’s ancient culture. Meanwhile, he was the first to translate Lao Tse's works into Sanskrit. Indian scholars had a high opinion of Xuanzang, "In China, there is no such great translator, and also in the human cultural history, we can only say that Xuanzang is the first great translator."(Ye Lang, 2008) We can say that it was Xuanzang who motivated people to know the different parts of the world, their cultures and the peoples who live there. Then, some big countries such as America, China, and so on became a melting pot.(Gu Zhengkun, 2000) People have imperceptibly spent thousands of years in knowing each other.

With China’s entry into WTO and its open-up policy, cross-cultural exchanges are increasingly frequent between this country and others. A lot of foreign tourists come to visit China. While traveling, these foreigners are not satisfied with the translations of the scenic spots. Sometimes, they even feel confused. A lot of problems exist in the translation, such as misuse of words, poor expression of meaning and so on. All of these poor translations do harm to our country’s international image, and cause a lot of inconveniences for the foreign visitors. (Ma Zuyi, 2000). I am fond of tourism and being a free tourist like the others who are good at enjoying their wonderful lives. The love of tourism makes me feel the need to improve the translation. But every time when I have a trip, many unsuitable translations of the names of those scenic spots will embarrass me. Tourism is part of intercultural communication, so proper translation of the scenic spots become more and more important to our country.

Communication plays a significant role in the globalized society. In order to know each other better, people from all over the world have tried a verity of ways. Of course, translation is one of them. All translators have done their best to make the translated works more consistent with the needs of people.(Gu Jinming, 1997) From my perspective, they really have done a great job. And I want to retrospect the cause of their development. After a thorough evaluation, I choose a branch of translation—ellipsis in translation from English to Chinese, then I did the following jobs.

I put all my researches and other stuffs together, and then I found that it is a common case in English and Chinese which draws much academic interest. In 1976, Halliday and Hsan classified ellipsis into nominal, verbal and clausal ellipsis. This classification exerts great influence in academic circle. Thereafter, ellipsis in Chinese and English has been studied according to this theory, which is based on different layers of structure. This kind of study underlines differentiations and similarities of ellipsis in Chinese and English.

Another famous theory to explain ellipsis is Economy Principle. Economy Principle was put forward by Chomsky (1991,1993, and 1995) in his Generate Crammer. It maintains that language and linguistic study follow Economy Principle, which means using the least effort to express the most information. This principle just coincides with ellipsis in function.

In this thesis, I think that brevity is the most obvious and common function of ellipsis, especially in daily language. And in both English and Chinese, people advocate brevity. Shakespeare once remarked, “brevity is the soul of wit”, and in Chinese there are numerous idioms like “yan jian yi gai” (meaning compendious). However, apart from the function of brevity, ellipsis embodies other functions which are also pretty common in the two languages but less noticed.(Hua Xianfa,2002)These functions distribute in both English and Chinese unevenly and represent great colorfulness of language. Exploring other functions of ellipsis and searching for functional recreation in translation will be of much benefit to both English to Chinese and Chinese to English translation.

I found that when Chinese authors try to analyse ellipsis in English to Chinese translation, they always initially put articles in the list. They consider that it is a common phenomenon that Chinese always leave out personal articles. While it is obviously different in English that almost every sentence has a subject, we can see articles fluently. That is because when we translate from English to Chinese, personal articles can be omitted, even though sometimes it may appear once, it can also be omitted if necessary. Furthermore, if the objects can be seen obviously, personal articles should also be omitted. However, it never happens in English. From this point, it is not only allowable but also necessary when we translate personal articles which are objects in sentences into Chinese.

In my point of view, the development of society has in some way has deliberately promoted the way of people’s thinking, translation system has become more and more perfect, people from all over the world have enjoyed the convenience. However, we can not neglect that there are still some problems in this field in China, and we have less influential Chinese translators in the world. Therefore, we still have a long way to go in translation.

III. Feasibility Analysis

This academic paper is a feasible project and the reasons are as follows:

have great interests in the way of English-Chinese translation.

have already studied translation methods and have been familiar with the functions and applications of ellipsis .

have collected enough references both Chinese and Western on ellipsis in

translation and do a scrupulous study of the relationship between them.

have a carefully planned schedule and have worked out a detailed outline of this thesis.

have acquainted myself with the correct format, a clear and complete structure required by the academic paper, and my adequate English competence will enable me to write in fluent and precise English.

instructor is a qualified translator who is familiar with the subject I havechosen.

IV. Problems of the research and solutions

1. Problems

Despite the references I have collected and read, a thorough study of ellipsis in English-Chinese translation from the point of freely using still needs far more. What’s more, owing to the limited ways of getting references in Xinjiang, I will have to make full use of my present resources. Also, this is the first time I have ever written such a serious academic paper. I am therefore a learner and lack the needed training and experience.

2. Solutions

(1) I shall make full use of my already acquired references which come from books, magazines and the Internet as well.

(2) I shall value my own original thoughts and mainly rely on detailed analysis that I have read from the books which have closely idea with my purpose.

(3) When I have difficulties in the writing process, I shall consult my instructor and seek for help.

V. Necessary conditions

1. Our university and school of foreign languages have provided the basic study and research conditions and facilities, including books and journals in the library and reading rooms.

2. The Internet is another source of information and on the campus we have easy access to the Internet.

3. I have been assigned an instructor to guide me through the whole process of planning and writing.

VI. Outline

I. Introduction

A. A Brief Introduction of Ellipsis in Translation

B. What Should We Pay Attention to When Dealing with Ellipsis

C. The Reason Why Ellipsis Is So Widely Used in Translation

1. Chinese Expressions Are Much Briefer Than That of English

2. English Grammar Is Wee-Knit and Complete in Sentence Structure

II. The Principles of Ellipsis

A. Omitted Words Must Be Useless And Unnecessary in the Translated Works

B. The Meaning of the Omitted Words Is Implied in the Test

C. Omitted Words Which Are Self-Evident

Ш. The Functions and Applications of Ellipsis

A. The Coherence of the Meaning of Expression

B. The Coincidence of the Manner of Expression

1. Ellipsis of Articles

a. Ellipsis of Definite Articles

b. Ellipsis of Indefinite Articles

2. Ellipsis of Prepositions

3. Ellipsis of Pronouns

a. Ellipsis of Personal and Impersonal Pronouns

b. Ellipsis of Indefinite Pronouns

c. Ellipsis of Relative Pronouns

4. Ellipsis of Conjunctions

a. Ellipsis of Coordinating Conjunctions

b. Ellipsis of Subordinate Conjunctions

5. Ellipsis of Rhetoric

a. Ellipsis of Repeated Words

b. Ellipsis of Synonyms

翻译学论文开题报告

开题报告是提高选题质量和水平的`重要环节。下面是我为大家整理的一篇以《目的论在英汉广告翻译上的应用》为例的语言学硕士论文开题报告，供参考阅读，希望对您有所帮助。

1、选题意义和背景

The progress of economic globalization has greatly hit the social life.

Advertising has become an important way of modern marketing and has attractedmerchants and the company. As people's consciousness worldwide enhances, manyproducts and services of advertising will be translated into other languages forpromotion to explore overseas markets. Advertising, as an effective way ofdisseminating brand information, has penetrated into many aspects of social life, andit plays a bridge role in connection and communication. Since China's accession tothe WTO, its connection with the world gets even closer. More and moreinternational enterprises and product brands come into China's huge market.

Translation of products and services for overseas consumers is not only the functionof promoting consumption, but also the effect of external publicity. In the globalmarket, advertising translation not only brings an opportunity for advertising, butalso has brings the huge challenge. Therefore, mastery of both Chinese and Englishadvertising translation is particularly important.

Skopos theory is the foundation and the core theory of functionalism. Skopostheory holds that the process of the whole translation behavior is determined to thepurpose of translation action, that is, the end justifies the means. The purpose of thetranslation behavior is the core element which determines the translation process.

Advertising translation has a strong purpose. What is more important toadvertising translation is whether translation can convey the purpose of source textand achieve the anticipated target of the source text, so as to attract the attention offoreign customers to induce their consumption desire, eventually to incur purchasebehavior.

2、论文综述/研究基础

1 Advertising Translation Studies in the West.

Advertising translation was mentioned in translation studies for the first time inHurbin's (1972) article “Peut-on traduire la langue de la publicé” (Can OneTranslate the Language of Advertising?)。 At that time, linguistics was the dominanthumanistic discipline, meanwhile, linguistics made translating a code-switchingoperation. Equivalence-based linguistic approaches mainly focus on the source text.

Hurhin argued that for one source text, there are several translations, and thetranslators chose which translation is the most appropriate one. Hurbin also pointedthat if glossaries of advertising language is compiled, this was made easier. So thetranslators will be easy to find the most appropriate equivalent expressions betweenthe source and the target text.

In Candace Seguinot's (1995) article “Translation and Advertising: GoingGlobal in Cultural Functions of Translation”. The main opinion of which is thatacross cultural boundaries, there is an understanding of culture and semioticsappearing in the marketing of goods and services. It goes well beyond both languageand design.

Another representative article “Advertising: a five-stage strategy for translationin Translation” as Intercultural Communication which is edited by C. Nord et al. Thearticle is published by Smith & Klein-Braley (1997)。 In this article, they conduct acontrastive analysis of English and German advertising. Then they developedtaxonomy of strategies for the analysis of advertising translation.

Up to now, the book which maybe the only one published exclusively onadvertisement translation is Translation Practices in International Advertisingwritten by Mathieu Guidere (2001)。 This book mainly talks about various aspects ofadvertising translation in international market and mainly concerns the globaladvertising of multinational companies, because they need to translate their productsinformation into other languages. The author analyzes some examples in advertisingtranslation and he shows readers some essential problems in current translation ideas.

This book introduced the strategies of translation which are implemented by the multinational firms to break into new markets.

2 Advertising Translation Studies in China.

Domestic advertising translation studies officially started in 1990s. In terms ofresearch contents, the initial studies mainly focused on the discussion about specificadvertising translation of idioms and the existing problems in Chinese-Englishadvertising translation. That was the primary stage. Years later, advertisingtranslation principle and criteria became the research themes. People hold the viewthat, advertising translation should give attention to in many aspects, such as text,language beauty, consumer psychology. Researchers illustrated their respectivepoints of view from different angles. Since the late 90s, although the discussion oftranslation principle and criteria were still mentioned, the researchers' attention weregradually focused on translation of difficult parts in advertising, such as therhetorical devices, emotional transmission, brand image and trademark reproduction ,etc. In terms of research methods, domestic advertising translation study mainly usesthe inductive method and the case study. Nevertheless, in recent years, researchersbegin to use the theory achievements of pragmatics and other related disciplines toanalyze different kinds of problems in advertising translation, and then put forwardsome translation strategies.

As early as xx, Li Fan proposed the development of the advertising languageposed a severe challenge to advertising translation. The artful advertisings require thetranslator to break hard the tradition of the original, boldly innovate, and improve thequality of translation. There are three reasons for flexible advertising translation: 1)the purpose of advertising is to induce consumer to purchase products. Text is justmeans, so translations do not have to stick to the text equivalent; 2) the feature ofadvertising language is vivid, which is the essence of advertising language. If thetranslation is not bold to change, there will be no magic translation; 3) formulaicexpressions are common use in advertising, if not alternative, it may be translatedinto foreign stereotyped writing (黎凡 xx:29-31)。 At the same time, researchersthought in terms of some specific advertisements, flexible translation seems to be theonly way, especially in the four kinds of advertising: 1) advertising used of witty and polished words; 2) advertising used of brand name; 3) advertising used of puns; 4)advertising with strong national culture color.

In order to achieve concise expression, attract more readers' attention, facilitatereaders recognize and remember, advertising writing should follow the KISSprinciple, namely, “keep it short and sweet” (郭可 1992:57-64)。 A great number ofstudies on advertising translation are associated with concise problem. Ding Shude isdedicated to his studies. He holds that: 1) Chinese advertising often uses modifiers toemphasis, product characteristics, while English advertising is simple words, mainlywith oral type. a lot of subject-predicative phrases in Chinese can be directlytranslated into adjectives English , such as 速度快、效率高、行动灵活 can betranslated into “fast, efficient and handy”; 2) There are a large number of the fourwords in Chinese advertising structure, which bring parallelism and overlapping tostrengthen language, but there is no such characteristic in English. InChinese-English translation should hold the center, around the center word leads toall aspects; 3) there are often loose sentences, which express a large amount ofinformation in Chinese advertising. Translation should be concise and compact,strengthen the logic; 4) Chinese advertising commonly uses formulaic expressions.

Translation should be fascinating, considering the overall rhetorical, but not stackrhetoric. Good English advertising language is not many words, but it is impressive(丁树德 xx: 42-43)。 Cao Shunfa also takes a large number of examples of bothEnglish-Chinese translation two aspects show that based on the principle of simple,the translation of advertising language should strive to use the most simple languageto express the most complex meaning, to make it easy to be remembered (曹顺发xx: 43-45)。

Equivalence theory is based on Nida's equivalence translation theory. On thisbasis, some researchers point out that commercial advertising translation is mainlyon the equivalence of semantic, social and cultural, and stylistic aspect. 1) Thesemantic equivalence. This is the most basic and important equivalence. From wordto chapter, in order to achieve the semantic equivalence, the first thing to thetranslator is that he must determine the meaning of the translation unit in context.