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I. Introduction In translation，to keep the content of the original textual material, we must, from grammar to vocabulary, make necessary changes in forms of expression in the source language in accordance with that in the target language. To what degree the changes will be depends upon the distances between two languages and their cultures. There will be less changes between languages which are more similar to each other or have the same or similar universal cultural backgrounds. And there will be more changes, on the other hand, between those which belong to different language families and do not share the same cultural backgrounds. No matter to what degree the changes may take place, the aim is all the way to keep the contents of the original textual material by seeking equivalence in information. In terms of translation skills，transformation is one of the very emergency measures to seek in the target language the equivalent information of the source language. In this way, contents of both source language and target language are in keeping with each other, though forms may be somewhat changed. The author, far from being knowledgeable and experienced in both translation theory and practice, is trying his utmost in the thesis from different grammar models of translation, by analyzing a great many very good examples from some excellent translation materials, to find some rules of transformation from English into Chinese, and also the reasons for transformation of various kinds, in the hope of contributing a little to the cause of translation. Above all, adoption of the technique of transformation is directly aimed at achieving the maximal expressiveness. II. Transformation of Parts of Speech in English-Chinese Translation Transformation is by far an old topic, but it is not one about which everything has already been done. There is no doubt about the fact that many domestic translators have been working on it from different angles and have made great contributions which are evident but still far from enough yet, for nothing has been done to gather all those reasons concerning concrete transformation. 2.1 Definition of Transformation In the translation from one language to the other most of the Chinese words has one kind of part speech, which can act as more parts of a sentence and it is unnecessary to change; While the English words are on the contrary, there are no set rules for the change over the part of speech, which must be changed when acting as different parts in a sentence but generally speaking, if the translation is on the basis of being faithful to the original, that will be better and natural. The American translation theorist Eugene A. Nida also pointed out that, means of transformation between parts of speech, like the use of noun denoting the meaning of an action, is widely used in some languages such as English and Greek. When we translate English into Chinese, however, we can more often than not meet with this kind of transformation. Then what we call transformation between parts of speech in English-Chinese translation may be defined in the specific way as transformation of some certain parts of speech in English into some other parts of speech in Chinese. 2.2 Necessity of Transformation It has been generally accepted that transformation is one of the most important translation techniques in English-Chinese translation. Before we go on with the principles of transformation, it would be advisable for us to go back to morphological classification of Chinese words. It is quite obvious that Chinese characters are not inflective in form and therefore not definite in part of speech when taken separately. In Chinese, some words can only be used in certain applications, while others without any outward change may function now as nouns, now as verbs, now as adjectives, etc., the value in each case being shown by syntactic rules and the content. It has already been stated that we can not always get an appropriate corresponding Chinese word for an English word of the same part of speech, and vice versa, and that if you replace each word in a sentence in one language with one or two words of the same part of speech in another, it would be substitution, and not translation at all, and the sentence this substituted would sound very awkward, or even unintelligible to the reader. A good translator will therefore try by all means to reproduce the thought of the author faithfully in another language, quite disregarding the parts of speech of individual words so used in his version. Sometimes, without transformation there would be much misunderstanding. For instance, Marx's son-in-law once wrote a reminiscence named "Reminiscence of Marx". If we do not adopt the technique of transformation of part of speech, the Chinese translation would be《马克思的回忆》，which may cause people naturally to think it was Marx himself who wrote this reminiscence. Conversely, if transformation is used to translate it into《回忆马克思》，which is then there would be no misunderstanding at all. In practical translation work, words in the original, if necessary, may be translated into words identical in meaning but different in part of speech. All in all, transformation of parts of speech of all kinds in translation is eventually aimed at expressiveness, which is of vital importance in the course of translating activity. III. Transformation between Parts of Speech in English-Chinese Translation According to the function of words, they can be divided into noun, verb, adjective, adverb, preposition，conjunction, pronoun, and so on both in English and Chinese. Let’s see what their functions are in this chapter. 3.1 Transformation of Nouns It has been universally acknowledged that English and Chinese, which do not belong to the same language family, differ greatly from each other, but have almost the same capability to express themselves and share the sameness more or less in vocabularies, because they are both the carrier of the ideology and culture of their own. They both have, for instance, various nouns to name a person, thing, quality, so on and so forth; various adjectives and adverbs to refer to the quality or characteristics of a thing or an action; and of course, many other parts of speech that have the same or similar function to describe a thing or an action. Either English or Chinese has its own unique characteristics of means of expression, that is, to be more specific, Chinese is a language in which verbs are more widely used than those in English; while in English nouns are more frequently used and occupy a dominant position, then we have to, more often than not, transform some English nouns into Chinese verbs in our practical translation from English into Chinese. 3.1.1 Nouns Transformed into Verbs An English noun possessing the property of a verb or derived from a verb is often transformed into a verb when translated into Chinese. For example: ⑴An increase in business requires an increase in the amount of money coming into general circulation. 交易增加，要求流通的货币量也增加。 This example is very typical. In this sentence, three English nouns are converted into verbs in translation, otherwise, there will be many versions of translation but neither would be as easy as the above one. Let’s see another example: ⑵Rockets have found application for the exploration of the universe. 火箭已用来探索宇宙。 We can see “application” and “exploration” are switched into verbs. If we don't convert the parts of speech, it can be translated into: "火箭已经找到了宇宙探索的应用" which is rather wordy and difficult to say. From the above two examples, I can see the importance or conversion of parts of speech in translation. Because of the use of conversion of parts of speech, the translation is more simple and concise, as well as more informative. 3.1.2 Nouns Transformed into Adjectives In English writing, there are some proper nouns which are derived from adjectives and without determiners, such as success whose part of speech need to be changed in translation into Chinese. Seen in this examples: ⑴The maiden voyage of the newly-built steam ship was a success. 那艘新建轮船的处女航是成功的。 If we translate it word by word: 那艘轮船的处女航是个成功， it would be rather awkward. ⑵He is a stranger to the operation of the electronic computer. 他对电子计算器的操作是陌生的。 In this sentence “stranger” is the derivative of strange, part of speech of it is transformed into adjective. 3.1.3 Nouns into Adverbs The transformation of English nouns into Chinese adverbs is far from being a universal phenomenon in translation, nor is there any great necessity for doing that. Some excellent translations, however, demonstrate to us that the transformation of English nouns into Chinese adverbs sometimes makes a more natural and smooth trans1ation. For example: ⑴I have the honor to inform you that your application has been accepted. 我很荣幸的通知你，你的申请已经被接受。 Clearly we can see "honor" was converted into adverb. ⑵When he catches a glimpse of a potential antagonist, his instinct is to win him over with charm!#p#分页标题#e# 只要一发现有可能反对的人，他就本能地要用自己的魅力把此人争取过来。 “Instinct” was converted into a verb too. This kind of conversion is not common in translation, and general principle for this is "名词+地". 3.2 Transformation of Verbs Verbs are a group of very important words which are also often transformed into other parts of speech in translation.It can be transformed into Chinese nouns and adjectives. 3.2.1 Verbs into Nouns In English, some verbs can not directly translate into Chinese verbs; in this case we have to transform it into Chinese nouns. For example: ⑴The film Titanic impressed us deeply. 影片《泰坦尼克》号给我们留下了很深的印象。 ⑵Science won’t let you juggle a bit. 科学不容许你一点玄虚。 ⑶Most US spy satellites are designed to burn up in the earth’s atmosphere after completing their missions. 美国绝大多数间谍卫星，按其设计，是在完成使命后，在大气层中焚毁。 3.2.2 Verbs into Adjectives Although it is seldom to translate verbs into adjectives, yet it still exists. For example: Although it is seldom to translate verbs into adjectives, yet it still exists. I wonder if the play works in such a condition. 我想这个计划在这样的条件下是否有效。 In this sentence, the verb “work” is translated into adjective. 3.3 Transformation of Adjectives Adjective can be divided into two categories according to its function: one is the verb + adjective, it is predicative, another one is used to modify noun, which is to say it’s functioned as an attributive. It is also very common to change adjectives to other part of speeches .It can be transformed into verbs and nouns. 3.3.1 Adjectives into Verbs When the adjectives are used as predicative and express feeling, psychology and love, they are often translated into verbs. For example: ⑴They are quite content with the data obtained from the experiment. 他们非常满足于实验中获得的数据。 When the adjectives are attributive in a sentence and at the same time they have the verb roots, like present or past participles of verbs, we usually translate them into verbs. The following example will illustrate it. ⑵The whales have not only suffered untold cruelty but now face total extermination. 鲸不仅遭受了说不尽的虐待，而且现在正濒临彻底的灭绝。 “Untold” in this sentence is past present, is functioned as an attributive, so we change its part of speech. 3.3.2 Adjectives into Nouns Generally speaking, there are two rules for us to follow when we change adjectives into nouns. First, we adjust the meaning of whole sentence. For example: ⑴The book is less practical in the international trade field. 这本书在国际贸易领域的实用性较差。 Here, we translate practical to its noun practice. Second, we put definite article “the” in front of some adjectives describing human beings or something. Thus, we change it into a noun and often translated as a plural form. ⑵Thanks for the aids from Red Cross; the deaf have recovered their hearing. 多亏了红十字会的援助，聋人恢复了他们的听觉。 “Deaf” is translated to noun, which means men who can’t hear .However, according to the usage “the+adjective” in our grammar book, this is only a noun phrase, and we can not consider it as transformation. 3.3.3 Adjectives into Adverbs If a noun in English is changed to a verb in Chinese, adjectives modifying the noun should be changed to adverbs accordingly in Chinese. For example: ⑴Traditionally, there have been very good relations between the two countries. 两国之间有着传统的友好关系。 ⑵From then on, they lived very happily for the rest of their lives. 从那以后，他们过着很幸福的生活。 Obviously, “traditionally” and “happily” are translated into adjectives. 3.4 Transformation of Adverbs Adverbs are frequently and variously used in English, some of which modify the verbs in the means of times, places and patterns, some modify the adjectives or other adverbs, and while some play parts in the leading the clauses and some decorate the whole sentence. The places of the adverbs are also flexible in the English sentence, sometimes in the beginning of the sentence, sometimes before or after the verbs, and sometimes in the middle of the words. Confronting of the translation of adverb, firstly we should make clear its function, correctly comprehend its meaning, and then accord to the Chinese customs tackle with the translation of adverbs. Adverbs are often changed into many other parts of speeches, which can mainly be classified into nouns and adjectives. 3.4.1 Adverbs into Nouns If adverb modifies the whole sentence not just a word, it’s generally translated into a noun. For example: ⑴The paper said editorially that blogs have developed into a fourth source of news, after newspapers, radio and television. 这家报纸的社论说，博客已经成了继报纸，广播和电视之后的第四中新闻来源. “Editorially” is shifted from an adverb to a noun. ⑵Psychologically and culturally, it is difficult and sometimes threatening to look too closely at failure. 从心理学和社会文化学上讲，真正深入地剖析失败是非常困难的，有时还会令人心烦意乱，甚至寝食难安。 3.4.2 Adverbs into Adjectives In our translation, verbs can be changed into noun, and then the modifier of verb- adverb is often translated into adjectives. Just as a result of the transformation of a certain English verb into a Chinese noun, the adverb which modifies the English verb is naturally transformed into a Chinese adjective. to modify the Chinese noun. For example: ⑴The wide application of electronic computers affects tremendously the development of science and technology. 电子计算机的广泛应用对科学技术的发展有很大的影响。 Another kind of adverbs is often used before or after noun, this is equal to modify the noun. ⑵The power plant supplies the inhabitants sixty Li about with electricity. 这个发电厂为方圆60里的居民供电。 Of course, this change is not a rule; we should follow the habitual usage. 3.5 Transformation of Prepositions Some experts claim that in English vocabulary, the number of noun is in the first place, while the preposition ranks the second. The role of connecting words and word phrases are played by preposition therefore the usage of prepositions is rather flexible. Some have made a survey that “of” is the most active one. It has 63 different usages in Oxford Dictionary. In Chinese, there are very few prepositions, then, it’s very difficult to find a proper preposition for its English equivalence, when we do English-Chinese translation. Therefore, sometimes we change preposition into verbs. Generally speaking, there are two types: First type is those having underlying meaning of action. Such as cross, past, through, via, towards. When they are followed by a noun, they can be translated as a verb phrase or subject-predicate phrase. For example: ⑴The car wound through the village and up a narrow valley, following a thaw-swollen stream. 小汽车迂回盘旋，穿过村庄，爬越峡谷，沿着一条因解冻而涨水的小溪行驶。 In the above example, through, up are all translated to verbs. The second type is those that have no verb meaning, but the noun after them are formed by verbs plus affix，gerund. Under such circumstances, we can change them into verbs according to context. ⑵And so today, in this year of war, 1945, we have learned lessons – at a fearful cost – and we shall benefit by them (Franklin .D. Roosevelt’s Fourth Inaugural Address). 在今天1945年，这个战争年代，我们得到了教训-并为此付出了惊人的代价-我们将从这些教训中获益。 “Cost” is a noun as well as a verb, thus, we translate it into a verb. Changes from prepositions to verbs are very common, which needs our further discussion. 3.6 Transformation of Conjunctions Transformation of English conjunctions is also one of the many problems we will inevitably encounter in our translating activity. Conjunctions in English, either single or phraseological units, are not difficult to be translated into Chinese. There are corresponding terms in Chinese for both co-ordinate and subordinate conjunctions in English. But in order to express the feeling or emotion of the speaker and to make the sentence fit for the Chinese language, we have variations in actual translation work. Most of the conjunctions are polysemantic and may be translated in various ways according to the context. The simplest conjunctions "and" and "or" are typical examples. "And" may be translated in more than twenty ways, and "or" in more than ten ways. The following parts will illustrate the various ways of translating these simple conjunctions. The most common way is to transform English conjunctions into Chinese nouns.#p#分页标题#e# For example: ⑴I don't know why she left so suddenly. 我不晓得她如此突然地离开的原因。 ⑵Mrs. Walkins waited to hear how others took the news. 华京斯太太等着看别人听了这个消息后的反应。 3.7 Transformation of Pronouns In English, pronouns are often used directly to replace nouns in the above context in order to avoid repetition. While, in Chinese, we often repeat to emphasize what we want to say. For example: The cost is not only environmental, it is also more serious in terms of the decline in public morals. 代价不止是环境上的，代价还是社会风气的变坏。 In this sentence, it’s obvious to see that “it” refers to “cost”, judging from this way, it is a kind of transformation. While in Chinese, we often repeat to strengthen the tone .That is why Parallelism sentence are very popular in Chinese. Of course, in these two sentences, pronouns are translated into noun, which can be viewed as the part of speech change. However, if we understand it from another respect, namely from the handling of pronouns in translation, this part is not in line with the theme of this theme; we will not discuss it any further. IV. Reasons for Transformation in English-Chinese Translation English and Chinese belong to two different language families with the former being a member of the Indo-European language family and the latter being a member of the Han-Zang language family. There are more differences than similarities in sentence construction between the two. English is an alphabetic language composed of Latin letters which represent the sound of words; whereas the Chinese language is an ideographic language composed of logographic characters which represent ideas or things rather than the sound of words. The English language has a large number of connective words, such as "because"，"who"， "while"， "if"， "when"， "which"， "that", "though", "therefore", "apart from", "inside", "as well as", "so that", "neither…nor'，its language sentence is likely to be and so on, which play an important role in helping speakers organize speeches. Therefore, when English built, relative words, conjunctions, and prepositions are used widely. Without these relative words in English, it is very hard to imagine how sentences are made. Also pronouns are in high leave frequency. For example, "I shall be very happy if you don't leave”, "Because of her illness, she didn't go to the cinema yesterday." According to Halliday's explication, it is obvious that English is a hypotaxis-prominent language, while Chinese is parataxis-prominent. So English speakers usually pay more attention to the integrity of the language form. When using English, the speakers place more emphasis on the compactness of the sentence structure with the help of connective words. Hypothxis in English also manifests lexical and derivational morphology, with which words such as nouns, verbs, pronouns, and adjectives define their categories like number, case, gender, tense, aspect and mood. With the principle of hypotaxis, the English sentence is produced with connectives to express grammatical meaning and logical relations, and will be precise and explicit. Conversely, Chinese speakers attach great importance to the inner logic of sentences. There are no connectives or very few combining phrases in Chinese, but clauses and sentences can still present a flow of ideas in a factually logical way, arranging themselves in a' certain order. In terms of parataxis, therefore, the Chinese sentence is implied, concise, and comprehensive. This is also one of the reasons why English sentences are subject-prominent, while Chinese ones are topic-prominent. 4.1 Differences in Classification of Parts of Speech As devices for exchanging ideas, English and Chinese share much sameness or many similarities in terms of vocabulary. For instance, both have various nouns to represent names of things or concepts; both have different verbs to refer to actions and states of various kinds; in order to describe characteristics of things or actions, English and Chinese have such modifiers as adjectives or adverbs; besides notional words, they both have such form words as prepositions and connective words. The differences in part of speech of the two languages exist likewise. For example, articles, relative pronouns, relative adverbs, participles, gerunds and infinitives are unique to English, all of which don't exist in Chinese. Even words of the same part of speech function quite differently in the two languages. In English, nouns are more frequently used than in Chinese, what's more, nouns of English have richer connotations. Therefore, many concepts representing actions are expressed with nouns. In this case, when translated into Chinese, they are often transformed into verbs and the adjectives which modify English nouns are accordingly transformed into adverbs. As is known to us all, English and Chinese are very different in terms of the number of word classes, scope of use of words and modes of expression. So a certain part of speech in English, when translated into Chinese, may or sometimes must be transformed into another part of speech. Based on Latinized tradition, eight or nine word classes are established in English, namely, noun, pronoun, adjective, verb, adverb, preposition, conjunction, interjection and article. Today, word classes in English display a wider range of more precisely defined classes. We have already learned that in Chinese there is no inflexion like that in Indo-European languages. By nature, Chinese characters permit of no inflected forms. This, however, does not mean that the Chinese language has no part of speech at all, as some western philologists have ill-intentionally pointed out. Instead of inflection, we have other changes: changes of tones, alterations of sound, shifting of accent, amalgamation and affixation, many of which are not familiar or known to the western people in general, not even to the so-called sinologists of the capitalist countries. All these changes tend to make Chinese words, not characters of course, distinguished in meaning and thus in part of speech. Broadly speaking, they all belong to morphological scope and therefore play a very important part in Chinese grammar. The traditional system of classification of Chinese words as notional words and form words has now been considered new and scientific, Notional words again fall into two groups: substantives (nouns or pronouns) and predicatives (verbs, adjectives, or numerals). It is, however, the form-words that are difficult to master. As soon as one has a good command of the form-words, one will be an excellent Chinese writer. In the same way, one has to master Chinese form-words in order to become a proficient translator. It will be readily seen from the very nature of the Chinese language that in translation we cannot always get an appropriate corresponding Chinese character for an English word of the same part of speech. If you try to replace each English word in a sentence with one or two Chinese characters supposed to be of the same part of speech, the sentence will be unintelligible to the Chinese reader. Adequate translation is, on the other hand, both faithful to the original text and smooth in the Chinese sentence. We do not care whether the individual Chinese characters used are consistent with the English words in their part of speech or in their word order. 4.2 Correspondence in Meaning but Different in Parts of Speech Nida holds that every language is capable of expressing the entire universe of experience with its own symbols, but in various ways. It is undoubtedly true that as long as we make a comparative study of the English language and the Chinese language, it is not difficult to find that words of the same meaning in both English and Chinese are not always the same part of speech. In other words, ideas expressed in one part of speech in English may or must be expressed in some other part of speech in Chinese due to great differences between English and Chinese. The preposition in English refers to word or group of words (e.g. in, from, to, out o0 used especially before a noun or pronoun to show place, time, position, method, etc. A preposition, when isolated, is not a sentence element at all. Because a preposition is always followed by a noun or noun phrase as a complement, when speaking of syntactic function of a preposition, we only mean that of a prepositional phrase, Curme once said, "There are more than 280 prepositions including phrasal prepositions in English." It cannot be denied that some English prepositions are derived from English verbs and still retain the meaning of a verb. In Chinese, however, there are only dozens of prepositions, most of which are also derived from verbs. Therefore, it is not always possible to transform an English preposition into a Chinese one. There are, of course, very many cases in which English prepositions must be transformed into Chinese ones, especially when they function as part of adverbials or attributes. Besides, nominalization in English is still more common than that in Chinese, especially in the English for Science and Technology. Nominalization refers to those noun phrases whose head words are abstract nouns derived from verbs or adjectives. We are very aware that in an English simple declarative sentence only one finite verb is permitted, therefore other indispensable meanings in this sentence can only be expressed with the aid of verbal nouns, non-finite verbs, etc. As a result, relatively speaking, English verbs are less frequently used than Chinese verbs in a simple declarative sentence. It is exactly because many English nouns can be derived from English verbs and adjectives that English-speaking peoples often use nouns instead of verbs and adjectives. In reality, frequent use of nouns in English makes the English language more vivid and more succinct.#p#分页标题#e# In effect, we cannot ignore the fact that words having more than one part of speech are more often seen in English than in Chinese. For instance, "content" can be used as a noun, adjective, and verb, the three of which are closely related to each other in meaning; "good" can be used as an adjective, adverb and noun, the three being closely related to one another in meaning, too. It must be admitted that there are too numerous examples to mention individually. Indeed, we cannot make an exhaustive list of all the examples, nor is there any necessity to do that. 4.3 Differences in Word-formation English and Chinese both have their own unique word-formation which to some extent accounts for transformation between parts of speech in English-Chinese translation. Word-formation in English, in its restricted sense, refers to the process of word variations signaling lexical relationships. It can be further subclassified into the compositional type (compound) and the derivational type (derivation). For the sake of our discussion, we confine our attention to the derivational type only. Different from compound, derivation in English shows the relation between stems and affixes. In contrast with inflections, derivations can make class of the original word either changed or unchanged. 4.4 Differences in Distance between Deep Structure and Surface Structure Besides the reasons mentioned above, there seems to be another important reason for the transformation of parts of speech of various kinds, i.e. differences in the distance between deep structure and surface structure in both English and Chinese. Noam Chomsky, a remarkable American linguist, holds that ①any language has both deep structure and surface structure; ②languages are more identical in deep structure than in surface structure; ③in deep structure lie all the semantic and syntactic explanations; .in changing deep structure into surface structure, some parts are omitted. Then, we are forced to know what deep structure and surface structure really are. According to Noam Chomsky, deep structure is abstract syntactic representations of sentences generated by phrase structure rules, but they are not the kind of sentences we ordinarily say. We need to change them into sentences we actually say, which are called surface structure. To realize this change, we need transformational rules, which are those rules to transform the deep structure of a sentence into the surface structure. A transformational rule consists of a sequence of symbols which is rewritten as another sequence according to certain convention. V. Conclusion English and Chinese have great much dissimilarity, this thesis lists the distinctions between English and Chinese which lead to transformation of parts of speech in English-Chinese translation. The skill of transformation is a very useful tool, therefore there are a lot of periodicals that elaborate it. This essay tries to explore the deep roots of this phenomenon, too. One to the so much divergence between English and Chinese, transformation of parts of speech is inevitable. Before the study of transformation of parts of speech, we are supposed to know what is parts of speech, and differences between the grammatical systems of English and Chinese. This thesis expounds grammatical systems in transformation of parts of speech in the first place, which is rather essential, after that this paper lists the classification of transformation of parts of speech. These are the main parts of this essay. From the above comparatively detailed analysis, we can learn that transformation between parts of speech is not only necessary but possible because though no two words in any two languages ever seem to have precisely the same meaning, though the syntactic structures in different languages differ greatly, languages exhibit far greater similarity of structure at the deep level than they do on the level of the surface structures. Only by means of transformation can we achieve entirely adequate translation. |
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