『譯聞 · 篇章結構與翻譯視角 』

今天的英语语法课上，Gloria谈及了被动态（Passive Voice）转换主语视角的句法功能以及英语结构的两个重要原则：End-focus（末尾中心）与End-weight（末尾重心），颇有启迪。

END WEIGHT & END FOCUS

The general order of elements in a sentence is:

subject - verb - object/complement/adverbial(s)

Sometimes the subject is a very long phrase explaining an idea and would make a sentence difficult to understand (the subject is marked in bold text):

The fact that many doctors who came to Finland in the 1960's had to start their medical studies over from the beginning in order to be licensed to practice here is unfortunate.

The principle called end weight means that we try to put long "heavy" elements at the end of the sentence, and keep the subject as short as possible. In cases such as the sentence above we often use the "empty subject" it with a complement followed by the "that" clause:

It is unfortunate that many doctors who came to Finland in the 1960's had to start their medical studies over from the beginning in order to be licensed to practice here.

This construction works with several adjectives in addition to "unfortunate".Some others are: amazing, apparent, appropriate, clear, doubtful, essential, evident, extraordinary, important, inevitable, interesting, likely, natural, obvious, odd, plain, possible, probable, surprising, and unlikely

Most reporting verbs can also be used in this type of construction in the passive form:

It was found/felt/agreed that this method had little effect.

Another commonly used construction to avoid front-heavy sentences is the so-called existential sentence, which begins There is/are... and a that-clause.

Thus, instead of:

Many people who believe that the recent warming of the climate is due to the greenhouse effect exist.

English prefers:

There are many people who believe that the recent warming of the climate is due to the greenhouse effect.

Note that in English the verb agrees in number with the noun group used after the verb to be:

There is one thing we can do.

There are three things we can do.

There can also be followed be a few adjectives indicating likelihood or possibility followed by the infinitive to be:

There are unlikely to be any problems.

There seems to have been some negligence.

There tend to be very few failures.

Some reporting verbs can also be used this way:

There is expected to be a report issued next month.

A quite formal usage is such verbs as remain, arise, exist and a few others:

There remain three major problems to solve.

Note also that new information is put at the end of sentences and 'given' information is put at the beginning. This links sentences together more tightly and produces a text that is easier to read.

Adaped from: http://users.utu.fi/micnel/endweight.htm

◎ 译者有心：

这两大原则由当代著名的英语语言学者夸克教授（Quirk et al ）等人首先提出。这回在语法课上，聆听到这个观点倒是挺有启发的。以往的英语写作中，我根本没有对此加以留心，因而写作中多少会有些中文思维的痕迹。有时按照中文的逻辑习惯频繁更迭主语，造成语义不清，结构散漫；有时句末保留了一些看似必要的信息，实则是redundance而应坚决删除之。其实这些问题同样出现在英汉互译的过程中，它反映了两种不同语言间对于信息处理的不同逻辑，因此有必要在翻译的过程中注意源语的结构特点，并根据焦点的分布进行译语调整，我想这便是常说译成中文要断句的缘由吧。