公研 Unit 3 Hypotactic vs. Paratactic 英汉对比与翻译 研究生 教学课件.ppt

Unit 3 Hypotactic vs. Paratactic  (形合与意合) 1. About Hypotaxis and Parataxis 2. More Parataxis in Chinese and More Hypotaxis in English 3. Some Paratactic Methods in English 4. E-C Translation of Paratactic Sentences  Hypotaxis (形合法) is the dependent or subordinate construction or relationship of clauses with connectives, for example, I shall despair if you don’t come. English sentence building is featured by hypotaxis. e.g. Parataxis (意合法) is the arranging of clauses one after the other without connectives showing the relation between them. e.g. The rain fell; the river flooded; the house washed away. I came, I saw, I conquered. He worked hard, he was still poor. Chinese sentence building is featured by parataxis. To clarify the relations between words, phrases or clauses, English more often resorts to overt cohesion (显性接应), frequently using various cohesive ties such as relatives (relative or conjunctive pronouns and adverbs, e.g. who, whom, whose, that, which, what, when, where, why, how), connectives (coordinate or subordinate conjunctions, e. g. and, or, but, yet, so, however, as well as, (n)either...(n) or.., when, while, as, since, until, so…that, unless, lest), prepositions, and some others. By contrast, Chinese more frequently relies on covert coherence (隐性连贯) and context, focusing on temporal or logical sequences. Instead of using various cohesive ties such as relatives, connectives and prepositions as in English, Chinese more often resorts to word order, contracted sentences (紧缩句), four-character expressions (四字格), and some grammatical or rhetorical devices such as repetition, antithesis, and parallelism. Compare English with Chinese: (1) 人 (若) 不犯我，我 (则) 不犯人。(语序) We will not attack unless we are attacked. (2) 说是说了，没有结果。 (= 我虽然说了，但是没有结果.) (语序) I’ve made proposals，but they proved futile. (3) (一旦) 抓住了主要矛盾，一切问题就可以迎刃而解。(语序) Once the principal contradiction is grasped, all problems can be readily solved. (4) (如果) 他不来，我 (就) 不去。(对照)