Differences in Writing Styles Between Chinese and German

Chinese, belonging to the Sino-Tibetan language family, and German, part of the Indo-European language family, exhibit significant differences. First and foremost, the most obvious and fundamental distinction lies in their character forms. Although both languages have different meanings due to pronunciation differences, Chinese has many homophones with different characters. Each independent Chinese character often carries a complete connotation, and words composed of different characters can convey new meanings. In contrast, German words are generated from combinations of 30 distinct letters, each word carrying its own meaning. This characteristic allows for many puns in Chinese; for example, poets often use homophonic characters to create metaphors in classical poetry, such as "柳" (willow) sounding like "留" (to stay), and "晴" (clear) sounding like "情" (emotion). Conversely, puns are rarely found in German due to the scarcity of homophones.

Secondly, from a structural perspective, Chinese is a more fragmented and flexible language focused on meaning rather than strict grammatical rules. While there are distinctions between subject, verb, and object in Chinese, the composition of sentences is not particularly rigid. In comparison, German exhibits a much stricter structure.

The framework of German sentences is quite apparent, with the verb typically occupying the second position, which establishes the framework within which all other components exist, arranged in the order of T (time), K (cause), M (manner), and L (location). Although there are occasional deviations from this framework for special purposes—such as emphasizing a particular idea or achieving rhyme—this rigidity is important for translation. Translators must not ignore the expressive forms of the two languages; translations from Chinese to German should not be careless or haphazard, while translations from German to Chinese should avoid being overly rigid and lifeless.

In this regard, Mr. Xu Yuanchong's concept of “exploiting the advantages of the target language” mentioned in "The Art of Translation" is thought-provoking. He suggests that sometimes the two languages can be equivalent, indicating balance, but when they are not equal, one language may have an advantage while the other is at a disadvantage. The strengths of Chinese lie in its succinctness, rich meanings, and prevalence of idiomatic expressions, such as four-character phrases. German’s advantages include logical rigor, clear grammatical structures, and a greater number of relative pronouns. Therefore, when converting between these two languages, achieving balance occurs only about half the time, and our goal should be to maximize the advantages of the target language while mitigating its disadvantages.

A typical example involves dealing with German relative clauses, which have no direct equivalents in Chinese; this illustrates a strength of German and a corresponding weakness in Chinese. For instance: "Wir haben schon die Übersetzung, die vom Chinesisch ins Deutsch übertragen wird, viele mal gelesen." can be translated in two ways: 1. "我们已经把这篇译文，这篇由中文翻译成德语的译文，朗读了好几遍。" 2. "我们已经把这篇中译德的译文朗读了好几遍。" It is evident that the second version fully capitalizes on the strengths of Chinese—being concise and clear—while the first exposes the weaknesses of verbosity and complexity. Handling relative clauses presents a considerable challenge in translating between German and Chinese, where precise positioning of components is essential, followed by timely adaptation to the target language's structure. By keeping this in mind and continuously reflecting upon it, we can more easily avoid producing stiff and unengaging translations. Of course, practice makes perfect, and continuous exercise in this conversion process is essential for real improvement.

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