Knowledge is not just about learning and absorbing, but also about the method used. Most people will face two problems during Chinese-English translation. If the Chinese sentence has the obvious SVO (subject-verb-object) structure, such as “我愛你”(I love you), then most people can translate it into English easily. Otherwise, most people usually have difficulty translating sentences without the SVO pattern such as this line“不行就算啦”(literally meaning: Not okay, just forget/give up) in Chinese. Therefore, we’d like to discuss how Chinese translation agency deal with sentences have no SVO pattern into English.
1. If this URL is unavailable, we should give up. 這個網址如果不能用，我們就放棄它吧。
2. Give up if unavailable. 不行就算啦。
There are mainly three steps involved when translating sentences without the obvious SVO pattern. First, rewrite the sentence into an SVO pattern according to the Chinese context. Supposing that the original sentence is “我們想訪問這個網站，但它的網址好像不對”, and its later sentence is “我們再換一個網站試試吧,” according to the context, we can rewrite it as “這個網址如果不能用，我們就放棄它吧”. Second, translate the revised version into English (the first sentence below). Third, simplify this English sentence and delete words added to the original sentence, such as URL (網址), we (我們), etc., retain words that the original sentence contains, such as unavailable (不行), give up (算啦), etc, and adjust the structure of words and sentence according to English writing style to form the final English version (see the second sentence below).
Some readers may ask what Chinese translation agency should do with sentences like “不行就算啦”. : In fact, in this case, you can make sentences like grade school pupils and rewrite“不行就算啦”into another one with SVO, that is, “這臺電腦如果不工作，我們就放棄它吧”, finally forming the final English sentence based on the above three steps. (Please see the following two sentences).
1. If this computer does not work, we should give up. 這臺電腦如果不工作，我們就放棄它吧。
2. Give up if non-functioning. 不行就算啦。