Understanding Sentence Structure for Better Translation

Taking Daudet's article "The Last Lesson" as an example: "De temps en temps, quand je levais les yeux de dessus ma page, je voyais M. Hamel immobile dans sa chaire et fixant les objets autour de lui, comme s’il avait voulu emporter dans son regard toute sa petite maison d'école..." At first glance, this sentence seems long and difficult to translate, but upon analyzing its structure, we can see that it is not actually that challenging.

First, "de temps en temps" serves as a temporal adverbial phrase, while the clause introduced by "comme" can be immediately recognized as an adverbial clause of manner. So, we can temporarily set these two components aside and focus on translating the main part of the sentence, which consists of two statements. It is clear that it translates to "When I lifted my eyes from my page, I saw Mr. Hamel sitting still in his chair, staring at everything around him." Then, we can add the remaining two adverbial phrases in accordance with Chinese word order. When we organize everything, we arrive at the complete translation: "每次我抬起头来，总看见韩麦尔先生坐在椅子上，一动不动，瞪着眼睛望着周遭的一切，好像要把这小教室里的东西都装在眼睛里带走似的。" This exemplifies the core point of translation—understanding the meaning of the sentence's main structure.

However, the magic of understanding sentence structure goes beyond this; its power truly manifests when faced with seemingly simple sentences that contain hidden complexities and are easily misinterpreted. For instance: "Aujourd'hui, le cinéma, appelé art, a conquis le nom de entier et c'est en milliards que se compte le nombre des spectateurs."

(We will focus primarily on analyzing the latter part of the sentence introduced by "c'est.") At first glance, one might wonder why the sentence appears so chaotic, with two verbs making it difficult to discern who the subject, predicate, and object are; this renders translation difficult. But let's remain calm and identify the sentence's main structure: it turns out this is an emphatic construction introduced by "c'est...que...," and we can temporarily set the emphasized part aside. Analyzing the latter part of the sentence reveals that "se compte" is the subject, and the rest forms a noun phrase. Further analysis shows that the subject of the sentence is "le nombre," while "des spectateurs" acts as a complement to the subject, with the emphasized portion serving as a predicate. Therefore, the entire sentence conveys a clear meaning: "(The art of cinema) has billions of viewers."

Thus, when translating sentences, if some translated texts do not logically make sense, it may be worthwhile to review whether the sentence structure was clearly understood. This isn't something that requires excessive effort, but it can be highly beneficial.

◀️：Exploration of Parallel Texts

▶️：Translation of long sentences in French into Chinese