Shall English Abstracts be always Consistent with Chinese Abstracts:On Abstract Translation Variation
HE Rui-qing · Educational Research on Foreign Languages and Arts · 2008
The statistics indicate that 25% of Chinese abstracts in domestic college journals have defects,79% of such defective abstracts fail to go through translation variation.Therefore,translators should be variation-conscious when translating Chinese abstracts into English.English abstracts may not be consistent with Chinese ones.The reasons are:first,the writing patterns of the two kinds of abstracts are different,form domestication strategy is to be applied in the translating.Second,abstract translation is unique.The translator can be faithful to the paper instead of the source abstract,because the latter may not objectively,completely and properly represent the former in content.Third,the defects in Chinese abstracts are almost unavoidable.Four,generally speaking,the translators are not the writers of the source abstracts.The translators have to apply translation variation to defective abstracts,but have no obligation and right to change the source abstracts.Five,the readers of the two kinds of abstracts are different.The domestic readers can rely on the papers to make up for the defects in the source abstracts,but the defects can not be retained in English abstracts.This paper discusses translation variation methods,i.e.deletion,addition and rewriting,and gives brief comments on three surveyed cases applying such methods.