汉语复句的成分共享与英译断句

Constituent sharing in Chinese complex sentence and the segmentation of its English translation

汉语复句英译时并非简单译为一个英语句子,而是多有断句,译为多个句子。对此,学界有翻译经验之谈,但缺乏科学论证。本文考察汉语复句英译实例,基于双语对齐结构,提出汉语复句“成分共享”概念及其与英译断句的关系假设;在此基础上标注汉语复句的成分共享与英译断句的对应关系语料,进行统计验证。结果表明:汉语复句内小句间有成分共享时,其英译倾向于不断句;反之则倾向于断句。这说明汉语复句与英语复杂句不是简单的对应关系,语法上与英语复杂句基本对应的是汉语成分共享小句组。

A complex sentence in Chinese is not simply translated into one English sentence, but always needs segmentation. The issue is when and where to segment. There are numerous practical summaries of this, but not sufficient scientific investigation. Taking the bilingual pairs of correlated clauses as its analytical basis, this study proposes the concept of constituent sharing and hypothesizes that there is a connection between the constituent sharing in Chinese complex sentence and the segmentation of its English translation. The hypothesis is then verified using a tagged bilingual corpora. The results indicate that in English translation of a Chinese complex sentence, the clauses with constituent sharing tend not to be segmented, while those without it are prone to being broken down. Essentially, Chinese and English complex sentences are not simply equivalent. What corresponds to an English complex sentence is actually a group of clauses with constituent sharing in a Chinese complex sentence.