Modern Social Science Research

It has been universally acknowledged that personal subjects are more used in the Chinese language while impersonal subjects more in the English language. Attempts are therefore made, with 10 simple Chinese personal-subjected sentences translated by some freshmen, to analyze their misuses of impersonal and personal subjects in C-E translation. The finding is that the vast majority of freshmen, while translating into English Chinese personal-subjected sentences, failed to convert effectively the personal pronouns in the Chinese language into impersonal pronouns in the English language. Analyzed further through questionnaires, it is found that there are two main contributing factors: first, lack of theoretical guidance; second, influences from their rigid way of thinking. It is, therefore, reasonably believed that it is necessary to teach in class the basic knowledge of Chinese-English personal and impersonal pronouns to help them avoid thinking familiarity and to probe into ways to help them improve their translation so that they could translate better by conforming to the expression habits in the English language.

Thinking familiarity; Expression habits; Misuses; Personal subject; Impersonal subject