长句的翻译-xuesheng.doc

第八讲 长句的翻译大量使用长句结构是科技英语的特点之一。长句是指含有较多或相当长的词组定语，词组状语等的简单句，或含有数量较多相当长的各种从句的主从复合句及等立复合句。英语一句话可以表达好几层意思，而汉语习惯用一个小句表一层意思。由此，译长句时，必须抓住全句的中心内容，弄清各部分之间的关系，分清上下层次及前后联系，然后按照汉语的表达方式，正确地传达原文含义。长句拆译的方法常用的有以下几种：1、顺序法：长句的顺序与汉语相同时，可以按英语原文的顺序，依次译出。例1：Bringing more water to the land, improving the soil, providing plant nutrients, teaching the farmer better cultural practices, giving him more efficient tools, etc cannot yield maximum results unless the plants under cultivation are able to respond fully to the improved environment and practices.例2：The global economy that boomed in the 1960s, growing at an average of 5.5 percent a year, and pushed ahead at a 4.5 percent-a-year rate in the mid-1970s, simply stopped growing in 1981-1982.例3：Some of these causes are completely reasonable results of social needs. Others are reasonable consequences of particular advances in science being to some extent self-accelerating.例4：Typically, when a customer places an order, that order begins a mostly paper-based journey from in-basket to in-basket around the company, often being keyed and rekeyed into different departments computer systems along the way.二、逆序法由于英语惯用前置性陈述，先果后因；而汉语相反，一般先因后果，层层递进，最后综合，点出主题。处理这类句子，宜先从后面译起，自下而上，随着英语原文的顺序翻译。例1：In reality, the lines of division between sciences are becoming blurred, and science again approaching the “unity” that it had two centuries ago-although the accumulated knowledge is enormously greater now, and no one person can hope to comprehend more that a fraction of it .例2：Additional social stresses may also occure because of the population explosion or problems arising from mass migration movements- themselves made relatively easy nowadays by modern means of transport.例3：A student of mathematics must become familiar with all the signs and symbols commonly used in mathematics and bear them in mind firmly, and be well versed in the definitions, formulas as well as the technical terms in the field of mathematics, in order that he may be able to build up the foundation of the mathematical subject and master it well for persuing advanced study.例4：The global recession, a period of slow or no economic growth stretching back to 1979, “has begun to resemble the great depression of the 1930s”, Development, led by former west German chancel or Willy Brandt, pronounced after its latest meeting.例5：There is no agreement whether methodology refers to the concepts peculiars to historical work in general or to the research techniques appropriate to the various branches of historical inquiry.三、分译法有时英语长句的主要成分和短语等所叙述的内容，关系并不密切。各具有相对独立的意义，这时，应按汉语的习惯，按长句中的从名或分词短语等拆开来分别译成独立的名子。例1：Plastics is made from water which is a natural resource in exhaustible and available everywhere, coal which can be mined through automatic and mechanical processes at less cost and lime which can be obtained from the calcinations of Limestone widely present in mature.例2：Further systematic investigation showed that this toxic effect was selective, being much greater against dicotyledonous plants, which happen to include the majority of weeds, than against the monocotyledons which include the grain crops and grasses.例3：Rivers differ greatly in character. There are swift-flowing rivers, slow, sluggish river with several months, rivers that carry vast loads of alluvium to the sea, clear, limpid rivers that at some seasons of the year have very much more water than at others, rivers that are made to generate vast quantities of electricity by their power, and rivers that carry great volumes of traffic.例4：For example, the study of radioactivity began as a piece of pure research, but its results are now applied in a great number of different waysin cancer treatment in medicine, the development of fertilizer in agriculture, the study of metal, fatigue in engineering, in methods of estimating the ages of objects in anthropology and geology, etc.例5：Manufacturing processes may be classified as unit production with small quantities being made and mass production with large numbers of identical parts being produced.四、加括号译长句翻译英语长句时，如果组织译文遇到困难，除上述一般译法外，还可采用一种普通的方法，将取些描述性的定语、状语、同位语，插入语等附加说明部分译在括号内。例1：A number of quite common occurrences are therefore sufficient to cause immediate and serious interference with this export production: unfavourable weather conditions, plant or animal epidemics, the exhaustion of soil fertility or mineral deposits, the development of substitute products in the industrialized regions, etc.例2：The very great importance of electrical measurement in a laboratory as well as in any branch of agriculture arises partly from the fact that a large and increasing number of other quantities, i.e temperature, humidity, air movement, gas pressure, solar radiation, light intensity, etc. are turned into electrical ones to be measured with the help of electrical meters.例3：A number of reforming procedures are available to produce a mixture of carbon monoxide and H2 from natural gas in which the main constituent is methane, and water vapour.五、综合法有些长句使用上述几种方法都不合适，可根据具体情况进行综合处理。例1：Noise can be unpleasant to live even several miles from an aerodrome; if you think what it must be like to share the deck of a ship with several squadrons of jet aircraft, you will realize that a modern navy is a good place to study noise.例2：Windows 2000 advanced server includes all the features and application availability of windows 2000 Server, with additional scalability and reliability features, such as clustering, designed to keep your business-critical applications up and running in the most demanding scenarios.例3：All too easily he can shatter the health of other road users and, indeed the happiness of all of us who have a right to enjoy privacy and the countrysides beauty and tranquility unhindered by raucous exhaust notes, petrol fumes, picnic litter, and thoughtless parking.Exercises1. Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.2. The statement declared that the international order must be changed or the gap between developed and developing countries would continue to widen.3.Throughout the ages only honest laboring people see the truth that wealth is created through labor. Only they can free their minds of any fantastic ideas of getting rich. And only they create and accumulate wealth for both society and themselves through practical work.4. A great number of graduate students were driven into the intellectual slum when in the United States the intellectual poor became the classic poor, the poor under the rather romantic Guise of Beat generation, a real phenomenon in ht elate fifties.5. Article I of the GATT is the celebrated most favored nation clause under which each member nation must give treatment to other member nations imports and exports that is at least as favorable as that applied to the most favored nation.6. Since the molecules of a gas are much too far from each other to repel or attract each other, it is very easy to compress a gas, while a solid or liquid is almost incompressible, because the repulsion of the electric charges of which its atoms are made up are far stronger than any force we can apply.7. What the New Yorker would find missing is what many outsiders find oppressive and distasteful about New York-its ra