A Contrastive Analysis Between the Chinese and English Versions of If I Were King from the Perspective of Hypotaxis and Parataxis

Though sharing some commonalities, English and Chinese do hold their own characteristics. Hypotaxis and parataxis are generally considered to be among the most significant differences between English and Chinese. Though previous studies have analyzed hypotaxis and parataxis from different perspectives, a few of them have applied them to prose translation. If I Were King, a typical essay written by Nie Gannu, is translated by Zhang Peiji (2012) and compiled in his Selected Modern Chinese Essays 1 . This paper is in an attempt to make a contrastive analysis between the Chinese and English versions of If I Were King from the perspective of hypotaxis and parataxis. The first part gives a brief introduction to the previous studies on hypotaxis and parataxis and If I Were King. The second part clarifies the meaning of hypotaxis and parataxis. Methodology is discussed in the third part. As the main part of this paper, the fourth part is the case studies on three levels: the lexical level, syntactic level and discourse level. The final part makes a summary and provides some practical suggestions. Through analysis, this paper aims to make other language learners have a better grasp of hypotaxis and parataxis so as to facilitate translation, especially prose translation. Besides, this paper may also provide enlightenment for scholars of contrastive linguistics.