Practical Translation Project Design

Technical terms in EST (see 2.2) are generally in the form of proper nouns, but the terms of TCM usually appear in phrases. As a result, the conversion from ST to TT inevitably involves the transformation between linguistic units, i.e. from word to phrase, from phrase to word, from phrase to phrase and from phrase to sentence. In the following analysis, the TCM terms from ST as well as their counterparts in TT are singled out and classified based on their linguistic unit conversion during translation. The results are summarized below (See Table 1).

Conversion of TCM terms	Frequency (%)			Total (%)
Conversion of TCM terms	TT1	TT2	TT3	Total (%)
From word to word	2（6.25）	10（38.46）	5（27.78）	17（22.37）
From word to phrase	2（6.25）	4（15.38）	8（44.44）	14（18.42）
From phrase to word	3（9.38）	0（0.00）	0（0.00）	3（3.95）
From phrase to phrase	14（43.75）	8（30.77）	5（27.78）	27（35.53）
From phrase to sentence	9（28.13）	3（11.54）	0（0.00）	12（15.79）
From sentence to phrase	2（6.25）	1（3.85）	0（0.00）	3（3.95）
Total	32（100.00）	26（100.00）	18（100.00）	76（100.00）

Table 1 indicates that among the six kinds of conversion of TCM terms, the most frequent one is from phrase to phrase (35.53%), and the kind of from word to word comes next (22.37), then from word to phrase (18.42%) and from phrase to sentence (15.79%). It is finally followed by from sentence to phrase (3.95%) and from phrase to word (3.95%).

In English, phrases are composed of two or more words in sequences that constitute a syntactic unit smaller than a complete sentence. In the above analysis, a syntactic unit that consists of a predicate verb and an object is considered as a sentence because a predicate verb is a distinguishing feature for a sentence from a phrase. In Chinese, on the other hand, a phrase is a syntactic unit composed of two or more words (NOT Chinese characters) in sequence that not only can be used as a part of a sentence, but also a complete sentence under some circumstance by adding a punctuation, e.g. period, question mark or exclamatory mark (Wu Yonghuan, 2003:186-202). This difference reflects in the TCM terminology translation. As seen from the above analysis (see Table 1), the TCM terms in ST are mainly in the form of phrases (55.27%), and most of them are translated as the same syntactic units in TT (33.53%). On the other hand, a large portion of them is rendered as bigger syntactic units, i.e. sentences (15.79%) and only a small part of them are translated as words in TT (3.95%). Another thing that needs to be mentioned is that totally 40.79% of the TCM terms in ST are in the form of proper nouns or words, but merely half of them (22.37%) are translated as single words in TT. The other half of them have been transformed in phrases (18.42%). In general, one-third of TCM terms (34.21%) are converted into bigger syntactic units, nearly 60 percent of them (57.9%) are kept in the same units, and only 7.9 percent are compressed into smaller syntactic units.

The result can be explained by the translation model system introduced by Li Yunxing (see 2.1.3). The TCM terms contain so many SL cultural elements that it is difficult to translate or compress them into single words in TL. When the Go-ahead Model, the Integration Model or the Adaptation Model is applied in translation, the terms in ST are converted into TT with the same or bigger syntactic units. When the Annotation Model or the Block Model is used, these terms are converted into TT with smaller syntactic units because some of their cultural meaning has been lost in their TT rendition.

This phenomenon can be further explained by the principles of textual/discourse translation that stress the communicative function of translation or bringing the effect of equivalence. As Hatim’s (2001: 76) comment, “equivalence is to be achieved not only of propositional content but also of illocutionary force,” translation should not only focus at the verbal level, but at the pragmatic level as well. Lederer (2005: 33-36) claimed that “utterances are effective because of recipients’ prior knowledge.” Translators should at first identify their readership so as to choose the appropriate model during translation. Meanwhile, they should realize that the bigger a syntactic unit is, the more meaning it can carry i.e. a sentence contains more meaning than a phrase, and a phrase contains more meaning than a word. The understandability of the TCM terms in TT depends on the prior knowledge of the target readers, and since at present the western people are not familiar enough with the traditional culture of China, the translation of the TCM terminology should have extra information to explain the necessary background information. Therefore, bigger syntactic units are used to meet this requirement of meaning capacity. On the other hand, as Newmark (2001:160) said, “terminology makes up perhaps 5-10% of a text. The rest is ‘language’, usually a natural style of language”, if all the terms are technically translated, the text will be over-occupied by abstract and awkward words and the nature and elegance of the texts will be completely lost. Consequently, translators always try to render technical terms at the same syntactic level as they have been used in ST, which is demonstrated in our analysis that 57.9 percent of the terms have been translated as parallel syntactic units as those in ST. However, we must be aware that this kind of translation may cause meaning loss as the cost for saving elegance of the text, and it is recommendable that only when we know the target readers have had the proper prior knowledge, should this strategy be applied to translation.

In conclusion, the choice of translation strategy for rendering terminology depends on the meaning and source culture density of ST on the one hand, and the prior knowledge of the target readers on the other hand. But in TCM translation, in order to keep the elegance of TT, translators are willing to use the same syntactic unit as in ST or bigger syntactic unit if it is necessary.

Defined by Baker (1993), textual coherence is “the agreement of a text with its situation”, and can be further divided into two types: intratextual coherence and intertextual coherence. According to Halliday (1985), the methods for textual coherence include reference, ellipsis, substitution, conjunction and lexical cohesion. Based on this classification, the coherence of the texts was analyzed and the results were listed below. (See Form 11)

Types of Cohesion	ST1	TT1	ST2	TT2	ST3	TT3
Reference	n/a	1	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a
Substitution	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a
Ellipsis	n/a	1	1	n/a	1	1
Conjunction	6	2	6	5	1	1
Lexical Cohesion	4(4)	3(3)	1(1)	1(1)	3(3)	3(3)

*The number represents the frequency of the cohesion device applied in the text.
*The number in the bracket represents the frequency of repetition applied in the text.

According to Li Yunxing (2001), discourse-oriented translation is a translation method that can substantially realize the cross-cultural exchange between ST and TT, and what the translators should try to prevent is the local translation based on word-to-word translation as well as syntactic translation isolated for the whole text. Based on the cohesive devices introduced by Halliday (1985), the coherence of ST and TT were analyzed and the final results were listed in Form 11.

The most frequently used cohesive devices are conjunction and lexical cohesion which shows no difference between ST and TT. And the lexical cohesion in all the ST and TT is in fact repetition. As conjunction is concerned, there is a trend to use less during the translation from Chinese to English. Ellipsis is also be used but the cases are rare. Reference, which is regarded as a common cohesive device, however, is seldom used.

The results are attributed to the textual patterns of TCM texts, which are often intentionally written following the style of technical text. Since both reference and ellipsis are considered likely to bring vagueness and confusion, they are rarely used in the source text, i.e. Chinese. And this trait has been transformed to the target texts. On the other hand, since the textual structure of Chinese is loose, it relies on conjunctions to highline the inter-textual logical relations of its texts. This trait will be obvious when texts with strict logical relation are written in Chinese. However, English is more logically tight in its textual nature; therefore, less cohesive device can be applied.

Based on the above analysis, it can be concluded that the translation of cohesive features between different languages is also important in the textual translation process.

As English has both active and passive voices while Chinese mostly applies active voice, the change of voice from the Chinese ST to the English TT is common and necessary. Therefore, the changes of each sentence of the three texts have been singled out and listed below (See Table 3).

Change of Voice	ST1 à TT1 (%)	ST2 à TT2 (%)	ST3 à TT3 (%)
Active à Passive	3 (27.3)	2 (50.0)	1 (25.0)
Active à Active	8 (72.7)	2 (50.0)	3 (75.0)

*The figure represents the voice changing frequency of the sentences converted into TT.

Compared with Chinese, the grammatical structure of passive voice is a unique feature of English. Meanwhile, the use of passive voice can give out an impression of plainness, preciseness and impartiality considered as the virtues of technical texts (Liu Miqing, 1998). This view has been verified by the results from Table 3, because at least 25% of the sentences in each text have been changed into passive voice during translation.