How to Avoid Translationese: Lessons from English-Chinese Contrastive Analysis

Begin with this sentence: He who doesn't speak foreign languages knows nothing about his own.

This piece comes from a literary translation course unit on English-Chinese contrastive studies: systematically understanding the differences between the two languages is a practical, effective way to avoid translationese — worth careful study.

Consider an example: The judge let the man off with warnings not to cause trouble again. How should the plural "warnings" be translated? "警告们"? "很多警告"? Neither reads naturally.

English is an inflected language; Chinese is non-inflected. English words change form to express number (-s), tense (-ing, -ed), gender (-ess) and more, while Chinese uses word order and particles — 了 / 已经 / 就要 / 正在 for tense, 们 for plurality, and so on.

Back to the example. A reference rendering: "法官对那人再三警告，不得再犯，然后就将他释放了。" The particle-like adverb "再三" (repeatedly) carries the sense of the plural.

Another example: He made sincere apologies to each of the teachers. Reference: "他向每位老师一一道歉，态度很诚恳。" — "一一" (one by one) answers both plurals, "apologies" and "teachers".

Or take to have all the right documents: "文件／证件齐全". What English expresses through morphological change, Chinese often handles with lexical means. See this clearly, and translationese fades from your work.