1.3 How do you applylinearity to translating a long sentence? P1-10

P1 Now let’s move on to section 1.3 How do youapply linearity to translating a long sentence? By translating a long sentenceinto Chinese, we can better understand its meanings, including both the gistand the details. However, how to use the translation strategy, actually,matters a lot because IELTS reading calls for both reading speed and accuracy.In this course , I am going to share with you an innovative learning mode ofEnglish reading, which adopts the technique of linearity (顺译) totranslate the long sentence into Chinese. 

Linearity is the abbreviation of SLOP （Syntactic Linearity OrientedPrinciple）. It refers to translating an Englishsentence into Chinese according to its original order of various sentenceelements, without or with little syntactic adjustment. In other words, followthe original order of the sense groups.

P2 Here is an example:

We hear what they said and view what they did;we see them as if they were really alive; we sympathize with them, enjoy withthem, grieve with them......

我们如闻其声，如观其行，如见其人；我们同情他们，和他们悲喜与共……

The translation has followed the originalorder of the sense group in the source language, which has greatly improvedreading speed and comprehension.

 P3 Let’s look at this example again:

Temporal hours（日光时）, which were first adopted by the Greeks /andthen the Romans, who disseminated them through Europe,/remainedin use for more than2500 years.日光时最初由希腊人采用,之后罗马人把日光时传遍欧洲，日光时一直使用了2500多年。

Thetranslation above has also followed the original order of the three sensegroups,, thus the reading efficiency has been achieved.

P4 The two attributive clauses served asmodifiers illustrate important facts, which need to be translated as well. Hereis a three-step linearity formula（后置合译法） to translate an attributive clause withcomplicated structure:

Step 1: omit relative words of “which” and “who”respectively;  

Step 2: replace the relative words “which” and “who”with such antecedents as “temporal hours” and“the Romans” respectively;

Step 3: combine the antecedents with the attributiveclause together, then translate it into Chinese as an independentsentence.  

Thus, the two attributive clauses can berewritten as follows,

1. 1)      Temporal hours were first adopted by theGreeks.日光时最初由希腊人采用。

2. 2)      (T)he Romans disseminated (temporal hours)through Europe.罗马人把日光时传遍欧洲。

P5Sincelinearity is of great help to deal with long sentences in IELTS reading, weshall be well informed of the techniques to do linearity. The techniques are intwo steps:

Step 1. Division (拆译) via segmentation(断句),which refers tochopping a long sentence into several short sense structure groups in front of conjunctions, relative words, prepositions,participles and infinitives.

Step 2. Combination (合译) via cohesion(衔接), which adopts suchtechnique as addition(增词),repetition(重复),omission(减词)and changing the parts of speech(改变词性),etc.to make thesegmented sense groups more adaptable to the target language.

P6 Look at thisexample:

I was told that Henry came across a pretty girl, / (who is the first prize winner of 2021 Campus SingerContest, / [ at 6 o’ clock ] [ last night ]/ [ at the university auditorium ].

Based on the aforementioned linearity technique,first of all, we can chop this long sentenceinto four sense-structure groups (断句成四个意义结构群):

1. 1)     Trunk: SVO-I was told that Henrycame across a pretty girl.

2. 2)     Modifier 1: the non-restrictive attributiveclause “who is the first prize winner of 2021 Campus SingerContest” tomodify the antecedent of “girl”.

3. 3)     Modifier 2 : the prepositional phrase “at 6o’clock last night” to indicate time.

4. 4)     Modifier 3 : the prepositional phrase “at theuniversity auditorium” to indicate venue.

Then, we can adopt some cohesive devices (衔接手段)to translate the four sense-structure groups into Chinese. The cohesive devicesinclude addition (增词) of “有人”，“时间”，“地点” and repetition (重复) of “这个女生:

（有人）告诉我，亨利碰见了一位漂亮女生，这个女生是2021校园歌手大赛冠军，（时间）是昨晚6点，（地点）在学校礼堂。

In this sense, reading efficiency has beengreatly improved.

P7 In terms of external syntax, a word orphrase serves as a point, a sentence or clause serves as a line, and aparagraph, or passage serves as a surface. Here a sentence is the core part tolink the other two, a word and a paragraph. Therefore it is highly important tocomprehend a sentence well, in particular a long sentence. In this sense,linearity can be very helpful to translate an English sentence into Chinese,which can improve our reading speed and accuracy.

P8 In sum, this course intends to take asentence as an entry point to improve reading efficiency at the level oflanguage acquisition. It follows such three steps, one is to identify thesentence trunk based on SVO（主谓宾）/ SVP（主系表）structure; two is to identify important modifying componentsincluding attributes or attributive clauses, adverbials or adverbial clausesand so on; three is to adopt the technique of linearity to translate the long sentenceinto Chinese in order to improve reading efficiency.

P9 Last but not least, such points need tobe remembered: the definition of a long sentence, those five strategies to identify the trunk in along sentence as well as the two techniques to apply linearity in translating along sentence.

P10 That’sall for Part 1 in Module 1. Thank you. Bye bye!