Parataxis or hypotaxis? Choices of taxis in Chinese–English translation

Abstract Adopting a Systemic Functional Linguistic approach, the article investigates choices of taxis in Chinese-to-English translation. Previous studies have proposed that Chinese texts tend to favor parataxis more than hypotaxis, and translators are often advised to change the paratactic relation to hypotactic ones in the process of translation. Against such a background, two research questions are proposed: (1) what choices do professional translators actually make when translating Chinese paratactic clauses into English; and (2) how do professional translators translate Chinese hypotactic clauses into English? The data comprises texts on how China fought against COVID-19 and scientific texts extracted from a translation textbook approved by the editing committee of CATTI. Analysis reveals that there are a variety of choices available to the translators, which are discussed and consolidated into a network. Paratactic relations in the Chinese source text can be removed, retained, or changed into hypotactic relations. Hypotactic relations in the Chinese text tend to be retained, although they may also be removed. Different from the popular belief that parataxis in Chinese should be translated into hypotaxis in English, the analysis demonstrates that the choices of removing and retaining paratactic relations are more frequently made than simply changing parataxis into hypotaxis.