论文总字数：24641字

摘 要

随着全球化的不断发展，各国之间的政治、经济、文化交流日渐频繁。其中，翻译的作用不可小觑。由于各国语言文化的差异，合理的翻译就显得尤为重要。如何处理翻译中的省略是其中一个重要方面。本文将从代词、连词、冠词、介词、修饰性五个方面的省略探究英翻汉中的省略问题，从而达到中国与英语国家交流更加畅通的目的。

关键词：翻译；省略；综述研究

Contents

1. Introduction…………………………………………………………………1
2. Literature Review…………………………………………………………2
3. Words to Omit ……………………………………………………………...4

3.1 Useless and unnecessary words…………………………………………….5

3.2 Words with their implied meanings given in the text..……...……......…......5

3.3 Self-evident words …………..……………………………………………...5

1. Different Kinds of Ellipsis………………………………………………….5

4.1 Ellipsis of articles …………………………………………………….....…. 6

4.2 Ellipsis of prepositions……………………………………………………...7

4.3 Ellipsis of pronouns…………………………………………………………7

4.4 Ellipsis of conjunctions……………...………………………………………8

4.5 Ellipsis of rhetorics……………………….…………………………………9

5. Conclusion………………………………………………………………..10

Works Cited…………………………………………………………………...11

1. Introduction

It is acknowledged that when doing translation one cannot 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 works 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 texts. 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 aspect in Chinese. Ellipsis is designed on the basis of faithfulness to the original text, making it more fluent, smooth, and concise, thus conforming to idiomatic Chinese. In this case, translators apply it in order to make their versions more coherent and better understood. The following two paragraphs analyze the reason why it is so widely used.

First of all, Chinese expressions are much briefer than those of English. So ellipsis as part of a special and inseparable translation method is widely used in English-Chinese translation. Generally speaking, a book or a passage which describes the same content in English may be longer in length than that in Chinese, because both English and Chinese have their own characteristics, such as being succinct in language, being abundant in words, being brief in sentences, as well as being flexible in structure. Therefore, brevity brings convenience to our daily communication and usage.

Secondly, English grammar is complete in sentence structure. The place of subject predicate, object and adjective in a sentence are fixed. A sentence in English consists of the subject and the predicate, no matter how brief it is. Therefore, there must be a large number of link verbs in English. As an integral part of the whole, its function cannot be neglected. Obviously, they are more widely used than that in Chinese. In order to make myself understood, let’s look at the following two sentences.

(a). You reap what you sow. 种瓜得瓜，种豆得豆。

(b). True words are not fine-sounding, fine-sounding words are not true. 信言不美，美言不信。

In the first Chinese version, there is no subject and in the second one there is no prediction. No doubt the omitted parts make the sentence structure in Chinese much briefer than that in English. Though neither of the two sentences has full sentence structure, we Chinese still know exactly what they mean, and to some degree they are much briefer.

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 between China and English-speaking countries.

2. 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 also introduced the first Chinese writings to foreign countries, whom made foreigners understood 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 a greater translator, nor in the human cultural history. We can only say that Xuanzang is the first great translator."(Ye 28) 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 86). People have imperceptibly spent thousands of years knowing each other.

With China’s entry into WTO and its open-up policy, cross-cultural exchanges are increasingly frequent between China and other countries. 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 bring lots of inconveniences to the foreign visitors. (Ma 68). I am fond of tourism and being a free tourist like those 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, and they really have done a great job (Gu 26). And for this reason, I want to retrospect the course of its 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 (Danica 89). This classification exerts great influence academically. 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 differences and similarities of ellipsis in Chinese and English.

Another famous theory to explain ellipsis is Economy Principle, which was put forward by Chomsky 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”, （Hamlet, act2, scene2, p4）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 53). These functions exist 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 largely benefit to both English-Chinese and Chinese-English translation.

I found that when Chinese authors try to analyze 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 into Chinese.

The development of society, in some way, has deliberately promoted the way of people’s thinking. Translation system is becoming more and more perfect, and people from all over the world can enjoy the convenience. However, we cannot 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.

3. The Principles of Ellipsis

Although ellipsis is commonly used in English-Chinese translation, it is not used freely without any principle. So what is omitted must be a certain word that is considered necessary in English but useless in Chinese. They may be something that has been mentioned in the same passage or in the same sentence, or even something that is self-evident in Chinese.

Ellipsis as one of translation skills, its principles must obey the principles of translation. Different translators have different opinions on the principles of translation. With the development of translation, in 1791, the first book about translation was written in English. That is The Principles of Translation which was published by Alexander Franser Tytler, who was a historian and translator and put forward three principles about translation. Firstly, the translated text should completely repeat the thinking of original text. Secondly, it must keep the characteristics of the style of the two. The last is to keep the translated work as smooth as the original text. After that, in 1898, Yan Fu pointed out that translated works must be faithful, expressive and elegant. In 1935, Lu Xun, a well-known writer in China, advanced that when doing translation we must consider the following two aspects: to make it easy to understand and to keep the style of the original.

According to the principles of translation, ellipsis of words must obey the following principles:

3.1 Useless and unnecessary words

For example, “You reap what you sow. 种瓜得瓜，种豆得豆。”The personal pronoun “you” in the translated version is omitted, because “you” could be anyone in the world. Personal pronouns like “you”, “we” in English, which play a role as subjects are always omitted when translated into Chinese.

3.2 Words with their implied meanings given in the test

While different words may have the same of similar meaning, the same one word may have more than one meaning. This is what ……… With the aid of some context and the polysemic words, it always produces literary meaning as well as connotations. This kind of pun also improves the effect of advertising expression.

3.3 Self-evident words

For example, “Television signals have a short range.—电视信号的传播距离很短。” In the translated sentence there is not a Chinese character “有”at all. Here the English word “have” is considered to be a word which can vividly show the characteristics of television signals.

4. The Functions and Application of Ellipsis

It is acknowledged that English and Chinese are two entirely different languages and each of them has its own characteristics in the way of expression. That’s why we should handle ellipsis in a practical way. That is to say, the reason we use ellipsis in English-Chinese translation is to make translated works coherent and make the manner of expression coincident with those Chinese expressions in original text.

As we all know, if we translate a work word for word, it will be redundant. Moreover, it may even change the original meaning and the style, which will make readers confused about translated versions. Therefore, useless words should be omitted when necessary.

As is known to all, the manner of thinking is affected by culture. To some degree, the ways of thinking and the form or style of the two languages help us to acknowledge the different cultures of the two languages, by which it will bring active effects for us to learn each of the two languages, and exchange culture with each other. Translators have made thousands of times to survey the differences and contrasts between English and Chinese in ellipsis.

Generally speaking, when doing English-Chinese translation, we can omit articles, prepositions, pronouns, conjunctions, rhetorics on the basis of the background of sentences.

4.1. Ellipsis of articles

Some nouns have no article in front of them in Chinese, so they are usually omitted in the process of English-Chinese translation. Let’s look at the following examples.

A square has four sides. 正方形有四条边

Things of a kind come together; people of a mind fall into the same group.

物以类聚，人以群分。

The horse is useful to man. 马是对人类有用的动物。

Milk is sold by the pound. 牛奶是按磅出售的。

The governments of the United States of America and the People’s Republic of China agreed to hold senior talks regularly on matters of mutual interest.

美利坚合众国政府和中华人民共和国政府同意就共同关心的问题定期举行高级会晤。

When doing English-Chinese translation, it is very common to omit articles. While sometimes, they couldn’t be omitted. For example, “He left without a word.—他一句话不说就走了。” Here the indefinite article “a” or “an” means “一”in Chinese, and it couldn’t be omitted.

4.2. Ellipsis of prepositions

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