The Reading Review of ChapterIV-VI

香山亭

谢嗣婷

Reading Time:
第九周

Reading Task:
Part one IV-VI

Summary of the Content:
As shown in the picture.

Evaluation:
The first stylistic feature of these sections is the continuation of pragmatism. They maintain the "problematic example + correction + explanation" framework, ensuring readability consistent with previous content (e.g., the typical redundant preposition error "discuss about" is directly contrasted with "discuss"). The second characteristic is precise categorization. Each chapter focuses on a specific part of speech (prepositions, pronouns, conjunctions), offering clear classification for readers to reference as needed.  
Thematically, the discussion expands from lexical redundancy to grammatical redundancy, revealing syntactic-level issues in Chinglish. For instance: prepositional overuse reflects the problem of "verb phrase literal translation" (e.g., "put emphasis on"); pronoun redundancy exemplifies the conflict between Chinese "explicit ownership" and English "implicit logic."  
The core idea evolves from "subtractive translation" to "implicit logic." It advocates achieving conciseness by eliminating grammatically redundant words, such as omitting self-evident possessive pronouns (Chapter V) or replacing conjunctions with punctuation or participles (Chapter VI). Additionally, these sections implicitly analyze the cognitive differences between Chinese and English: Chinese emphasizes "formal repetition" (e.g., mandatory pairings like "虽然...但是..."), while English relies on "contextual implication" (e.g., "Although..." without a following "but").

Reflection：
The analysis of grammatical redundancy in "The Translator's Guide to Chinglish" provides us with a mirror to reflect on modern communication styles. In the fast-paced digital life, we often fall into two extremes. On one hand, we over-package simple information like redundant prepositions, using cumbersome expressions such as "in terms of..." and "under the circumstances of..." to hide the emptiness of the content. On the other hand, we abuse conjunctions like using "then", "but" and other verbal tics to fill the gaps in our thinking, revealing the breaks in the logical chain. This phenomenon can be seen everywhere in workplace reports, social media, and even daily conversations, essentially reflecting that modern people are gradually losing their ability to express precisely in the flood of information.
The "subtraction principle" advocated in the book enlightens us that the true communication efficiency does not lie in how much we say, but in whether we can use the most essential language to convey the core meaning. If this thinking of language simplification can be extended to the social level, it may reduce the clichés in meetings, the redundant words in policy documents, and even alleviate the cognitive fatigue of contemporary people caused by information overload. The conciseness of language is essentially the purification of thinking, and this purification is precisely the most precious communication wisdom in this era of information explosion.