An Analysis of the Affecting Factors during the Translation Process

I.Introduction

Translation is a highly sophisticated decision making process. During the decision making process， basic translation problems are easily came across. In this article， two levels of different translation factors are detailed analyzed and critically evaluated. Also， a variety of corresponding problem-solving strategies are concluded to cope with the difficulties encountered during the translation process.

II. Difficulties and Strategies

1. Lexical Factors

Mona Baker has summarized several strategies used by professional translators to deal with difficulties at word level.

Example 1

ST （Source Text）： the next best thing you can do is put in solar hot water

BT （Back Translation）： the next most valuable thing you can do is put in solar hot water

In English， “good” is used a lot， which stands for different meanings under different situations. While in Chinese， the word “good” cannot be used in every context， and we need to specify what kind of “good” it is talking about--that is to find the suitable “subordinate” for the superordinate word “good”. Here， the “good thing” could be interpreted as the “valuable thing”， hence “most valuable” is used in translation.

2.Syntactic Factors

The syntactic structure is clearly ruled for English， while Chinese grammar is characterized by covertness. The elements of Chinese sentences often function indistinctly. This is a feature to which needs to pay special attention， and it is also notable that Chinese is a topic-prominent language and English is a subject-prominent language. How to convert between them needs techniques.

Example 2

ST： More than 12 per cent of a typical household energy bill is stand-by power

BT： a household energy bill， more than 12% of the electricity is consumed as stand-by power

The subject of the source text is too long to be duplicated into Chinese， so the structure has to be changed. As it is talking about the energy consumed by a household， hence the topic “a household energy bill” can be given out， then it becomes much easier to arrange the rest information in Chinese. Such structure not only makes the target text read more smoothly， but also conveys the clear topic and content the source text is trying to deliver.

III. CONCLUSION

Translation needs a full consideration of various aspects including lexis， syntax， and so on. As Stuart Campbell said， translation difficulties can be studied from three distinct dimensions： the source text， the translation task and the translators competence. Therefore， translators need to improve their competence by doing numerous translation tasks so as to develop corresponding strategies to cope with translation difficulties.

作者簡介：

區意婷 （1982-），碩士，現就職于廣東東軟學院英語系，主要研究方向為英語教育， 語言學及翻譯。endprint