1.3 How do you apply linearity to translating a long sentence? 如何运用“顺译”策略将长句翻译成汉语P1-10

P1 Now let’s move on to section 1.3 How do you apply linearity（顺译） to translating a long sentence? By translating a long sentence into Chinese, we can better understand its meanings, including both the gist （主旨）and the details（细节信息）. 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 of English reading, which adopts the technique of linearity (顺译) to translate the long sentence into Chinese. 

Linearity is the abbreviation（缩写） of SLOP（Syntactic Linearity Oriented Principle 顺句驱动）. It refers to translating an English sentence into Chinese according to its original order of various sentence elements, without or with little syntactic adjustment（句式调整）. In other words, follow the 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 original order of the sense group in the source language, which has greatly improved reading speed and comprehension.

 P3 Let’s look at this example again:

Temporal hours（日光时）, which were first adopted by the Greeks /and then 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。

The translation above has also followed the original order of the three sense groups, thus the reading efficiency has been achieved.

P4 The two attributive clauses served as modifiers illustrate important facts, which need to be translated as well. Here is a three-step linearity formula（“三步走”后置合译法） to translate an attributive clause with complicated structure:

Step 1: omit relative words（关系词） of “which” and “who”respectively;  

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

Step 3: combine the antecedents（先行词） with the attributive clause（定语从句） together, then translate it into Chinese as an independent sentence.  

Thus, the two attributive clauses can be rewritten 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。

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P5 Since linearity（顺译） is of great help to deal with long sentences in IELTS reading, we shall be well informed of the techniques to do linearity（顺译）. The techniques are in two steps:

Step 1. Division (拆译) via segmentation(断句), which refers to chopping a long sentence into several short sense structure groups（意义结构群） in front of conjunctions（连词）, relative words（关系词）, prepositions（介词）,participles（分词） and infinitives（不定式）.

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

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（主干）: SVO-I was told that Henrycame across a pretty girl.

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

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

4. 4)     Modifier 3（修饰成分3） : the prepositional phrase “at the university auditorium” to indicate venue.

Then, we can adopt some cohesive devices (衔接手段) to translate the four sense-structure groups（意义结构群） into Chinese. The cohesive devices include 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 been greatly improved.

P7 In terms of external syntax（外部语法）, a word or phrase serves as a point, a sentence or clause serves as a line, and a paragraph, or passage serves as a surface. Here a sentence is the core part to link the other two, i.e. a word and a paragraph. Therefore it is highly important to comprehend 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 a sentence as an entry point to improve reading efficiency at the level of language acquisition. It follows such three steps, one is to identify the sentence trunk（识别长句主干） based on SVO（主谓宾）/ SVP（主系表）structure; two is to identify important modifying components（识别重要修饰成分） including attributes or attributive clauses, adverbials or adverbial clausesand so on; three is to adopt the technique of linearity to translate the long sentence into Chinese（顺译长句成汉语） in order to improve reading efficiency.

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

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