Comp Stud Trans EN 1

==A Contrastive Study of Hypotaxis and Parataxis in English and Chinese ——A Case Study of the Translation of The Human Stain by Philip Roth== 石丽青（202120081521）

Abstract

The study of hypotaxis and parataxis is one of the most important research subjects in contrastive linguistic in English and Chinese. It is generally acknowledged that English is a hypotaxis-prominent language while Chinese boasts a parataxis-prominent language. This paper makes a contrastive study of hypotaxis and parataxis in English and Chinese from perspectives of cultural factors, language manifestation and translation practice. This thesis is composed of five chapters, contents of which are as follows: Chapter 1 discusses the significance and purpose of the study, definitions of hypotaxis and parataxis as well as a general review of previous studies. Chapter 2 analyzes the causes for hypotaxis and parataxis existing in different cultures, proving that the hypotaxis-prominence of English and the parataxis-prominence of Chinese are the consequence of the disparities in philosophy and modes of thinking. Chapter 3 elucidates the manifestation of hypotaxis and parataxis in English and Chinese. English is hypotaxis-prominent and connects phrases and clauses by using particles such as relatives, conjunctions and prepositions. English sentences are tree-like pattern and bases on the subject-predicate mechanism. Chinese, on the contrary, is characteristic by parataxis-prominence and connected by its inner logical relations. Chinese sentences follow a bamboo-like pattern and are established on the topic-comment mechanism, attaching great importance to the semantic relations between language elements. Chapter 4 is the core part of this thesis, making an elaboration on the translation practice of hypotaxis and parataxis, with reference to the Chinese version of The Human Stain by Philip Roth, which is translated by Liu Zhuhuai. Chapter 5 comes to the conclusion that according to the analysis of The Human Stain, in the process of English-Chinese translation, proper means can be put into practice to transform English hypotaxis into Chinese parataxis so as to render the translation work tend to be more perfect and meet the requirements of Chinese readers. However, it is necessary to be conscious of the relativity of English hypotaxis and Chinese parataxis. The style of the work and the writer, the cultural context, or the difference of pragmatic meaning all have an impact on the usage trend of hypotaxis and parataxis in the text. Nevertheless, having a a good master of the construction feature of English and Chinese is conducive to translating more authentic by using appropriate translation strategies, so as to promote cultural transmission.

Key words

hypotaxis; parataxis; The Human Stain; translation

摘要

形合与意合是英汉语言对比的一个重要研究议题。通常认为英语为形合形语言，汉语为意合形语言。本文从文化因素、语言表现及翻译实践对英语的形合与汉语的意合进行对比研究。 本文由五个章节构成。除第一章概述和第五章结论外，其他章节的主要内容为： 第一章讨论了论文的研究意义和目的、形合与意合的定义等基本概念，同时对以往对于形合与意合的研究进行总体性的综述。 第二章分析不同语言形合意合差异的形成原因。证明英语形合与汉语意合之差异的形成是不同哲学和思维方式的产物。 第三章阐明形合意合在两种语言中的表现。英语形合指的是句中的词语或分句之间用语言形式手段连接起来，表达语法意义和逻辑关系。英语复句一般是一种由几个简单句构成的葡萄式结构。汉语意合指的是词语或分句之间不用语言形式手段连接，句中的语法意义和逻辑关系通过词语或分句的含义表达。汉语复句一般是一种由几个简单句构成的竹节式结构。 第四章是论文的核心部分。通过对刘珠还译美国当代著名作家菲利普·罗斯的作品《人性的污秽》中实例的分析，探讨了形合意合的翻译实践。 第五章是论文的总结部分。通过对《人性的污秽》的分析，可以得出结论：英汉翻译过程中通过采取恰当的翻译策略，使英语形合特征向汉语意合特征转化能使译文更加符合汉语读者的阅读习惯和要求。然而，应当注意的是，英语形合与汉语意合具有相对性，文化语境、作家作品风格以及语用意义的差异均会影响形合意合的运用。尽管如此，熟练掌握英汉两种语言的这一特征有助于译者运用适当的翻译策略译出更为地道的译文，以此来促进文化传播。

关键词

形合；意合；人性的污秽；翻译

Introduction

This part mainly discusses the significance of the study, definitions of hypotaxis and parataxis as well as a general review of previous studies.

1.1 Significance and Purpose of the Study

Eugene. A. Nida upholds that the contrast between hypotaxis and parataxis is the most important linguistic difference between Chinese and English (Eugene. A. Nida 1982). Rated as one of the most important subjects in comparative linguistics, the study of hypotaxis and parataxis makes an indication that there is a major discrepancy in organizing languages between English and Chinese. Liu Miqing holds the view that hypotaxis versus parataxis is the heterogeneous characteristic featuring English and Chinese texts (Liu Miqing 1985: 31). Chen Fukang made a conclusion in his book A History of Translation Theory in China (2000: 476): “ Translation theory in China, on the one hand is quite abundant, on the other hand still falls behind.” All of theses points of view indicate that the contrastive study of hypotaxis and parataxis is conducive to shedding light on having a better understanding of the nature of these two languages. Therefore, this thesis intends to make clear the nature of hypotaxis and parataxis in order to make some contributions to the study of translation theories in China.

1.2 Definitions of Hypotaxis and Parataxis

Hypotaxis is defined in The American Heritage Dictionary as “dependent or subordinate construction or relationship of clauses with connectives”, e.g. : If you jump, I will jump. On the contrary, parataxis is described in The World Book Dictionary as: “ The arranging of clauses one after the other without connectives showing the relation between them”, e.g. :You jump. I will jump. The Chinese definitions of hypotaxis and parataxis are generally acknowledged to be introduced first by Wang Li. He first put forward the two concepts in his book Chinese Grammatical Theories: “ Hypotaxis is also called explicitness or overtness, which refers to the connection of words or sentences by linguistic ways including both lexical and morphological ones. Parataxis, opposed to hypotaxis, is called implicitness or covertness, which refers to the connection of words or sentences by inner logic and semantic relations between linguistic units.” From the perspective of him, the connectives in both English and Chinese are similar in function. However, Chinese is characterized by parataxis, rendering connectives unnecessary, while hypotaxis is a major feature existing in English, in which connectives are indispensable at the level of sentence.

Later, many Chinese linguists have tried to define hypotaxis and parataxis when interpreting similarities and differences between English and Chinese. Among them, Liu Miqing holds the view that the so-called hypotaxis refers to connecting words or sentences with the help of grammatical ways, including lexical and morphological ones and parataxis connecting linguistic units through the meaning of the word or logical relationships, with the former putting more emphasis on grammatical cohesion and the latter more on semantic coherence. According to him, hypotaxis and parataxis should be considered in the scope of ways of expression. In brief, when it comes to hypotaxis and parataxis, the elaboration on the definitions of the pair of terms can be divided into two groups, with one believing that hypotaxis and parataxis happen exactly at the level of clause and the other holding that they not only happen at the level of subordinate clauses but also between independent sentences.

1.3 A General Review of Previous Studies

Either in Contrastive Linguistics or Textual Linguistics, the research of hypotaxis and parataxis is rated as one of the most significant research subjects, and studies on hypotaxis and parataxis have been carried out in a broader scope at home and abroad. Eugene. A. Nida (1982: 16) pointed out that from a linguistic perspective, the most important difference between English and Chinese is the contrast between hypotaxis and parataxis. Halliday (1985: 218) held that “the general term for the modifying relation is hypotaxis, which is the relation between two like elements of equal status, one initiating and the other continuing.” He elaborated on hypotaxis and parataxis as subordinate construction and coordinate construction, which are only particular manifestation of generally discussed hypotaxis and parataxis. Furthermore, Halliday attached great importance to the view that both hypotaxis and parataxis refer to cohesive features of a language and do not belong to the category of conjunction.

Liu Miqing (1996: 31) believes that the contrast between hypotaxis and parataxis is the heterogeneity of English and Chinese linguistic features. Lian Shuneng interprets in his book Contrastive Studies of English and Chinese (1993) that English emphasizes structural integrity and explicit expression of meanings. Various formal devices such as the relative words, connectives and prepositions are used to combine words, phrases and clauses together, so English is typically hypotactic (1993:48). He further elaborated that Chinese, on the contrary, is typically paratactic as it arranges words in a logical order of events, and that feature of Chinese is reflected in word order, compressed sentences and four-character construction (1993: 54-56). After he has made a semantic contrast between English and Chinese, Xu Tongqiang (1997: 52) comes to a conclusion that the Indo-European languages can be considered as grammatical language while Chinese a semantic one. Besides, he points out that a grammatical language concentrates on word class and sequence of linguistic elements with the subject-predicate structure as its kernel. Conversely, a semantic language like Chinese focuses on individual words, their meanings and semantic relations.

From the above discussion, many scholars have come to the consensus that English is hypotaxis-prominent while Chinese is a parataxis-prominent language. However, It is worthy of noticing that the difference of hypotaxis and parataxis does exist between English and Chinese, but the disparity is dialectic. In other words, neither of them exists independently of the other in any text. Therefore, relativity of the use of hypotaxis and parataxis should be taken into consideration in translation practice.

Chapter 2 Causes of Formation of Hypotaxis-Prominence and Parataxis-Prominence

Different countries boast different cultures and customs. This chapter mainly analyzes the causes of formation of hypotaxis-prominence and parataxis-prominence. Apart from the superficial factor—a linguistic aspect, deep-seated cultural causes are elaborated in length, namely diversities in modes of thinking and philosophy.

2.1 Superficial Factor—Linguistic Features

From the aspect of linguistic features, English tells a quite different story compared with Chines. On the one hand, English attaches great importance to the language form while Chinese puts more emphasis on meaning than form. According to Wang Li (2000), from the perspective of syntactic construction, English grammar is “law-governed” for the reason that language form is strictly restricted grammatically. And Chinese grammar is “man-governed” in that less grammatically restricted language form may give way to the need for meaning expression. On the other hand, As far as Lian Shuneng is concerned, in contrast to Chinese, English is a synthetic language which is characterized by frequent and systematic use of inflected forms to express grammatical relationships. Chinese is a typically analytic language which is featured with a relatively frequent use of function words and changes in word order to express syntactic relations, rather than of inflected forms (Lian Shuneng 1993: 1). To put it in a nutshell, hypotaxis-prominent English is principally characterized by morphological markers. On the contrary, parataxis-prominent Chinese boasts implicit semantic relations in linguistic context and pays attention to the covert expression of language meaning within sentences.

2.2 Deep-rooted Causes —A Cultural Explanation of Hypotaxis and Parataxis

H. Goodenough once pointed out in his Cultural Anthropology and Linguistics (1981) that “a language in a given society is a part of its culture.” Eugene A. Nida mentioned in his book Language, Culture and Translating (1993) that “since culture is defined succinctly as ‘the totality of beliefs and practices of a society’, nothing is of greater strategic importance than the language through which its beliefs are expressed and transmitted and by which most interaction of its members takes place.” Hence, language is a cultural phenomenon and a social one as well, and hypotaxis-prominence in English and parataxis-prominence in Chinese are the consequence of disparities in modes of thinking and philosophical thoughts between the two countries and peoples.

2.2.1 Diversities in Modes of Thinking and Their Reflections on Languages

Modes of thinking, formed in the process of long-term historical development, is the synthesis and unification of the formalized thinking method and thinking procedure, which vary from one ethnic group to another owing to the disparities of different languages. With the reference of some studies and researches, the analytic thinking or the sense of individuality has cast a deep impact on English Language. While Chinese attaches great importance to the synthetic thinking and the sense of integrity. Advocating harmony and symmetry is the highlighted presentation of the emphasis of synthetic thinking. SL: 它收敛了它的花纹、图案、隐藏了它的粉墨、彩色，逸出了繁华的花丛、停止了它翱翔的姿态，变成了一张憔悴的，干枯了的，甚至不是枯黄的，而是枯槁的，如同死灰颜色的枯叶。 TL: When it gathers its wings full of exquisite patterns, it conceals its beautiful colors. When it flutters out from a cluster of blooming flowers and alights somewhere in the middle of its graceful flight, it turns into a dried leaf, not even of a withering yellow, but of a deathly grey.

The holistic thinking is also reflected in the implicitness of Chinese grammar, the parataxis of syntax and the generality and fuzziness of word meaning. Analytical thinking is manifested in the explicitness of English grammar, the conformation of syntax and the concreteness of word meaning. SL: You are no more needed, so you can go now. TL: 你可以走了，这里不需要你。

2.2.2 Diversities in Philosophy and Their Reflections on Languages

Chinese synthetic philosophical concepts have a great influence on the Chinese language structure, which is demonstrated by unity of “Wen” and “Zhi”, of word and image, of image and meaning, and of “Ti” and “Yong”. According to Shen Xiaolong, “with regard to traditional Chinese syntax, the structure of Chinese resembles flowing water, going forward along with the narration of events”(1995:116). The westerners, contrary to the Chinese, have an analytic mode of thinking which stems from western atomic philosophy. Cheng Zhongying points out that the law of causation in the west is atomic, external and mechanical while in the Chinese philosophy, it is synthetic, organic and internal.

From the above brief analysis, the diversities of modes of thinking and philosophical thoughts among nations are ultimately reflected in their languages. One of the most salient example is that an English sentence possess strict and explicit grammatical and logic relations among its components, while the counterparts of a Chinese sentence are loosely connected.

Chapter 3 Manifestation of Hypotaxis in English and Parataxis in Chinese

The manifestation of hypotaxis in English and parataxis in Chinese is elucidated in this chapter. English is hypotaxis-prominent and based on the subject-predicate mechanism, the use of relatives as well as other cohesive devices. Chinese, on the contrary, is characteristic by parataxis-prominence and connected by its inner logical relations. Chinese sentences follow a bamboo-like construction and are established on the topic-comment mechanism, flowing-water pattern, compressed sentences as well as four-character construction. However, the contrast between hypotaxis and parataxis is dialectic.

3.1 Hypotaxis-Prominence in English

Hypotaxis is also called explicitness or overtness, which refers to the connection of words or sentences by linguistic ways including both lexical and morphological ones. English underscores overt cohesion and fruition of semantic functions by means of forms, and the adherence between English clauses usually resorts to connectives of logical grammar. Hence, various kinds of approaches are applied to connect linguistic units, including different relatives, connectives and prepositions, etc.

3.1.1 Subject-predicate mechanism

English traditional grammar defines sentence as “a linguistic unit which includes a subject and a predicate” (Jesperson 1954). Partridge points out that nine out of ten English sentences are of the subject-predicate form (cited from Zhang Sijie,etc. 2001). Chomsky elucidates the basic generating principle for sentences as : S—NP+VP. Liu Miqing holds the same point of view that the S-P mechanism in English sentences is of indispensability (1996: 28). A conclusion can be drawn that subject-predicate mechanism is the universal form of English sentences. Several clauses arise from the main stem to explain, to define, to expand, to modify and to strengthen. The whole sentence is so complex and bulky that it looks like a tree with luxuriant branches and leaves. However, English sentences, long or short, simple or complicated, can boil down to a kernel S-P construction in which the subject is always a Noun Phrase and the predicate is a Verb Phrase. From the structural analytic perspective, English sentences are generally divided into five basic patterns: SV: My mother left. SVP: She is optimistic. SVO: He received my present. SVoO: She gave me a book. SVOC: They elected him their president.

From the above, the arrangement of words should be consistent with the explicit sentence form, which forms the reason why English is a hypotaxical language. It should be noted that the concord or coordination in person, gender, number and meaning strengthens the characteristic of hypotaxis-prominence in English. To sum up, the construction of linguistic units in English is restricted to the S-P mechanism. In addition to this, the principle of a noun phrase as the subject and a verb phrase as the predicate and the concord of number, person, gender together with meaning shape the feature of hypotaxis-prominence in English. Furthermore, one simple English sentence can only possess one predicate verb. Therefore, the adherence between English clauses usually resort to the connectives, conjunctions and prepositions.

3.1.2 Relatives and conjunctions

Halliday & Hasan put their interpretation on the characteristics and the connective role of conjunctions as “Conjunctive elements are cohesive not in themselves but indirectly, by virtue of their specific meanings; they are not primary devices for reaching out into the preceding or following text, but they express certain meanings which presuppose the presence of other elements in the discourse”( Halliday & Hasan 1976). Relative words are composed of relative pronouns, relative adverbs, connective pronouns and connective adverbs, such as who, that, which, whom, whose,when, where, why, how, etc., which are used to link main clauses, subjective clauses, objective clauses and predicative clauses included. Conjunctions consist of coordinating conjunctions and subordinating conjunctions, which are used to connect words, phrases, sentences or clauses, such as and, but, or, so, as well as, if, while, when, until, unless,etc. Certain examples are listed as follows: Love is the one thing that transcends time and space. When an opportunity is neglected, it never comes back to you. If you want knowledge, you must toil for it. I love waking up in the morning and not knowing what is going to happen, or who I’m going to meet, where I’m going to wind up. These relative words and conjunctions are essential for making English sentences. The frequent use of connectives and relatives in English is an important embodiment of completeness and rigor of English grammar form. The use of these words makes contribution to the explicitness of semantic relationships between sentences or clauses. These explicit markers are conducive to the hypotaxis feature of English.

3.1.3 Prepositions

Prepositions play an important role in the formation of English sentences and are a form of hypotaxis. The basic function or prepositions and prepositional phrases is to show the relationship between words and sentences, usually followed by a noun, pronoun, phrase or clause as an object. Only the predicate or the parallel predicate of each clause of an English sentence is a finite verb. If other actions or behaviors occur, only its non-predicate form, namely infinitive, present participle, past participle, can be used in the sentence. Moreover, prepositions are crucial to connect nouns transformed from verbs to other components. From the above analysis, the use of prepositions in English is ubiquitous. The structure connected by prepositions renders English sentences overlapping and complicated, which is a typical hypotactic language.

Hence, it can be concluded from the complex tree structure, the use of relative words and conjunctions as well as prepositions that the construction features of English are dominated by hypotaxis.

3.2 Parataxis-Prominence in Chinese

Parataxis, opposed to hypotaxis, is called implicitness or covertness, which refers to the connection of words or sentences by inner logic and semantic relations between linguistic units. Chinese is a paratactic language. According to Jiang Jiansong (2002:9), Chinese sentence structure is loose but flexible, with implicit coherence, logical relations and the narrative order. The manifestation of parataxis-prominent in Chinese is as follows:

3.2.1 Topic-comment Pattern

Zhao Yuanren upholds that “the grammatical meaning of subject and predicate in a Chinese sentence is topic and comment, rather than actor and action” and “the proportion of applicability of the actor-action meaning in Chinese is very low, perhaps not much higher than 50 percent” (1968: 70). Chinese sentences are basically composed of subject and predicate. However, unlike English, Chinese sentences rarely derive other clauses or structures from the main sentence pattern. Instead, they tend to explain the events one by one in chronological order and way of reasoning progression through the use of multiple verbs and short sentences. It is called “bamboo structure”. Furthermore, Chinese sentences, short and pithy, are built on the “thought-pivot” (Chen Hongwei 2009: 130), emphasizing the meaning and the whole artistic conception of the text.

3.2.2 Word Order

Chinese sentences take word order as logical connection structure. “Word order refers to the arrangement of speech units in a combination, reflecting people’s language habits and logic” (Chen Hongwei 2009: 168). Word order can be a reflection of the relationship between language symbols at all levels from word to text, which is a crucial means of language ideogram. Chinese frequently counts on a certain word order to express the relationship between the components of a sentence. Without taking the pragmatic meaning in specific situations, Chinese expressions usually follow relatively fixed logic, large to small, far to near, macro to micro, whole to individual, abstract to concrete, etc. Word order is one of the most pivotal factors in Chinese. “ All Chinese grammar is syntax, all Chinese syntax is word order and therefore all Chinese grammar is word order” (Zhao Yuanren 1968: 260).

3.2.3 Flowing-water and Contracted Sentences and Four-character Construction

The flowing-water construction, first proposed by Lu Shuxiang, boasts the most distinctive paratactic expression in Chinese. Chinese sentences can be classified into full and minor sentences. A full sentence is any sentence that contains a subject and a predicate, from which elliptical sentences may be derived by grammatical transformations. A minor sentence is a word, phrase or clause functioning as a sentence and having in speech an intonation characteristic of a sentence but lacking the grammatical completeness and independence of a full sentence. From the perspective of Lu Shuxiang, in one flowing-water sentence there are several minor sentences which flow one after another and can stop or flow on in many places (Lu Shuxiang 1979). The following is an example of parataxis.

舟窗尽落，清风徐来，执扇罗衫，剖瓜解暑。（沈复 《浮生六记》） And we let down all the windows to allow the river breeze to come in, and there, dressed in light silk and holding a silk fan, we sliced a melon to cool ourselves. (Translated by Lin Yutang) Apart from flowing-water sentences, parataxis-prominent Chinese is characterized by the contracted sentences, which are formed after the disappearance of phonetic pause and the implicit conjunctions in spoken Chinese. The predicate part of the contracted sentence has complex semantic relations, including two relatively independent statements with logical relations such as condition, hypothesis, cause and effect. Four-character construction, abundant in Chinese as well, presents a flexible syntactic function. In Chinese writing, especially in narrative and descriptive texts, there is an obvious tendency to construct sentences with phrases as sentence segments, which are neatly arranged, with varying length and laden with music and rhythm. From,the above analysis, the parataxis feature of Chinese is evident in bamboo structure, word order ideographical feature and sentence patterns such as flowing-water sentences, contacted sentences and four-character phrases.

Chapter 4 Implications for Translation Practice of Hypotaxis and Parataxis in The Human Stain

This chapter is the core part of this paper, making an elaboration on the translation practice of hypotaxis and parataxis, with reference to the Chinese version of The Human Stain by Philip Roth, which is translated by Liu Zhuhuai.

4.1 A Brief Introduction to The Human Stain

The Human Stain, the last book of Philip Roth’s famous “American Trilogy” [the other two are American Pastoral (1997) and I Married a Communist (1998)] and published in the beginning of 21st century, shifts the writing perspective from the Jewish people to the white people and their black counterparts or toward American society as a whole. In the next year of its publication, The Human Stain won PEN/ Faulkner Award in the United States and WH Smith Literary Award in the same year in the United Kingdom. In 2002, Roth received the award of Prix Médicis Etranger in France. Set in the historical background of Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky scandal in 1998, Coleman, the protagonist, is a college professor of black descent who has lived an almost glorious life as an anonymously Jew in American society until he is framed as a racist in an “Spooks” accident in his later years. He then develops a romantic relationship with a young cleaning woman and the two are killed in a deliberate car crash. The novel unfolds in a series of retrospective lives, joined by other characters whose secrets and filthiness gradually come to the surface.

Published in the year of 2000, this novel was first translated into Chinese by Liu Zhuhuan, a renowned Chinese professor. Withe the publication of its Chinese translation, The Human Stain has aroused great responses among Chinese readers. Besides, many Chinese scholars have carried out various studies on it from diversifying perspectives.

4.2 The Application of Translation Principle of Hypotaxis and Parataxis in The Human Stain

Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. Hypotaxis and parataxis are the recognizable text strategies in English and Chinese. Moreover, literary translation from Chinese to English or vice versa is frequently engaged in the transfer of parataxis into hypotaxis or that of hypotaxis into parataxis. Take the comparison of the two translations of The Human Stain for example. The following part will analyze the translating process from the perspective of hypotaxis-prominence in English and parataxis-prominence in Chinese to be clear of the differences between them. Example 1: SL: In the Congress, in the press, and on the networks, the righteous grandstanding creeps, crazy to blame, deplore, and punish, were everywhere out moralizing to beat the band: all of them in a calculated frenzy with what Hawthorne (who, in the 1860s, lived not many miles from my door) identified in the incipient country of long ago as “the persecuting spirit” (The Human Stain 2000: 3). TL: 国会里、报纸上、网络中，所处可见满腔正义、哗众取宠、渴望指责、哀叹和惩罚的小爬虫，四处游说、唇枪舌剑、大肆说教：全都处于霍桑（十八世纪六十年代他住在离我家门口没有几英里的地方）早在建国初期就指认为“迫害精神”的处心积虑的狂热之中。 Example 2: SL: Only rarely, at the end of our century, does life offer up a vision as pure and peaceful as this one: a solitary man on a bucket, fishing through eighteen inches of ice in a lake that’s constantly turning over its water atop an arcadian mountain in America (The Human Stain 2000: 382) TL：只有在极为稀有的场合，在我们这个世纪的末尾，生活会呈现出诸如这幅画面般纯洁宁静的景象：一个孤独的人，坐在桶上，通过十八英寸的冰层垂钓，这位于美国的一座田园牧歌似的山峦顶部的湖泊有着长流不绝的水源。 Example 3: SL: It was in the summer of 1998 that my neighbor Coleman Silk—who, before retiring two years earlier, had been a classics professor at nearby Athena College for some twenty-odd years as well as serving for sixteen more as the dean of faculty—confided to me that, at the age of seventy-one, he was having an affair with a thirty-four year-old cleaning woman who worked down at the college (The Human Stain 2000: 2). TL: 一九九八年的夏天，我的邻居科尔曼·西尔克—他直到退休前两年在附近的雅典娜学院担任了二十多年的古典文学教授，并兼任负责教务的院长超过十六年之久—悄悄对我说，他七十一岁，正和学院里一个三十四岁的清洁女工私通。

Through the comparisons of the English version of this sentence and its counterpart in the Chinese version, subject-predicate mechanism is the universal form of English sentences. Several clauses arise from the main stem to explain, to define, to expand, to modify and to strengthen. The whole sentence is so complex and bulky that it looks like a tree with luxuriant branches and leaves. The frequent use of connectives and relatives as well as prepositions such as “and, with, what, as, in and on, etc.” in English is an important embodiment of completeness and rigor of English grammar form. On the contrary, the Chinese version of the sentence is laden with many flowing-water sentences, contracted sentences as well as four-character phrases such as “国会里，报纸上，网络中，满腔正义，哗众取宠，四处游说，唇枪舌战，大肆说教，处心积虑, etc.”. And there is an evident tendency to construct sentences with phrases as sentence segments, which are neatly arranged, with varying length and laden with music and rhythm. Chinese sentences tend to explain the events one by one in chronological order and way of reasoning progression through the use of multiple verbs and short sentences. It is just like a bamboo structure. In addition, Chinese sentences, short and pithy, are built on the “thought-pivot”, emphasizing the meaning and the whole artistic conception of the text.

Chapter 5 Conclusion

By means of making a comparative study of hypotaxis and parataxis in English and Chinese, this paper elaborates on the translating principle of these two features with reference to the Chinese version of The Human Stain. The study is conducted from three aspects, namely, the reasons of the formation of the phenomenon of hypotaxis-prominence in English and parataxis-prominence in Chinese, the manifestation of these two characteristics and the application of the translating principles.

English is hypotaxis-prominent and connects phrases and clauses by using particles such as relatives, conjunctions and prepositions. English sentences are tree-like pattern and bases on the subject-predicate mechanism. Chinese, on the contrary, is characteristic by parataxis-prominence and connected by its inner logical relations. Chinese sentences follow a bamboo-like pattern and are established on the topic-comment mechanism, attaching great importance to the semantic relations between language elements.

In the process of English-Chinese translation, proper means can be put into practice to transform English hypotaxis into Chinese parataxis so as to render the translation work tend to be more perfect and meet the requirements of Chinese readers. However, it is necessary to be conscious of the relativity of English hypotaxis and Chinese parataxis. The style of the work and the writer, the cultural context, or the difference of pragmatic meaning all have an impact on the usage trend of hypotaxis and parataxis in the text. Nevertheless, having a a good master of the construction feature of English and Chinese is conducive to translating more authentic by using appropriate translation strategies, so as to promote cultural transmission.

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