The Application of Chomsky’s Syntactic Theory in Translation Study

• Published in: Journal of language teaching and research Vol. 2; no. 2; p. 396
• Main Authors: Wu, Ying, Xu, Runjiang
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Academy Publication Co., Ltd 01.03.2011
• Subjects: Grammar; Interdisciplinary subjects; Language; Linguistics; Phonology; Science; Second language learning; Syntax; Theory; Translation studies; Wu, Ying; New York; United States > US; China
• ISSN: 1798-4769; 2053-0684; 2053-0684
• DOI: 10.4304/jltr.2.2.396-399

Since he put forward his Transformational- generative Grammar (TG), many scholars have tried to use the concepts of deep structure (D-structure) and surface structure (S-structure) to provide a theoretical basis for translation studies. Linguistics is where they have paid most attention as both linguistics and translations are the study of language. [...]as soon as Chomsky's TG theory came into being, scholars have been interested in applying this theory to the scientific research of translation. [...]this example is enough to illustrate that syntactic analysis alone is not enough to determine the sentence meaning. [...]it's cannot act as the only information source of translation. According to TG theory, it is clear that ST1 and ST2 have different deep structures because they have different syntactic relationships. [...]according to Nida's theory, they should have different deep structures in Chinese respectively, and TT1 is undoubtedly a correct translation of ST1 and TT2 of ST2.