Hello and welcome back to English for Academic Purposes.
In this lecture, we will discuss the skill of addition,
particularly adding adjectives or adverbials.
We know that addition is sometimes used in translation to supply what is implied in forms.
Adding certain words can also make the translation more expressive for the target readers.
This is particularly the case with adding adjectives or adverbs.
Let's look at the following example.
"In addition to fasting at night, it's beneficial to eat the main meal earlier in the day."
The sentence was taken from the article "You are What You Eat".
It proposes the idea that
eating at night is more likely to gain weight than eating during the day.
You can pause for a minute to translate first.
A word-for-word translation could be:
除了夜间断食之外，将一天中的主餐时间提前也是有益的。
There is nothing wrong with this Chinese translation,
except for the fact that Chinese adjectives are often modified
by intensifiers such as "很" or "非常" as in "她很美丽".
In order to improve the translation,
we can add an adverb to modify "有益" as in "将一天中的主餐时间提前也是很有益的".
The intensifying adverb not only makes the translation smooth as it reads,
but also more vivid and expressive.
Now let's look at another example.
"With what enthusiasm the Chinese people are building socialism!"
This sentence functions as an exclamation (感叹句),
which is indicated by the structure of "what + noun",
and the use of exclamation mark (感叹号).
A word-for-word translation would be: "中国人民正以高度热情建设社会主义!"
This version, however, is rather descriptive (描述性的) and plain (语气平淡),
and has no such effects as exclamation and vividness.
Chinese language has its own expressive adjectives.
The English exclamatory expression "what enthusiasm"
can be replaced by the Chinese "多么高的热情",
making the translation more expressive and vivid.
From the two examples we can see that,
adding adverbs or adjectives is no longer a simply matter of meaning consistency.
It goes beyond the semantic (语义) purpose,
and serves for rhetoric purposes, making translations as clear and vivid as possible.
That's all for this lecture.
Thank you for watching. Good-bye!