The Differences Between Chinese Writing and English Writing(中英文写作差异)

The Differences between Chinese Writing and English Writing

What will you do if you cannot write an English article after racking your brains? Will you try to write a Chinese draft according to the topic and translate it into a so-called English writing with the help of an electronic dictionary?It’s the way of writing English articles thinking in Chinese styles. In fact, there’re numbers of differences between English writing and Chinese writing.

Firstly, it’s easy to find in our daily life thatthe date, time and place are written from small to big, from details to abstract in English which is opposite to Chinese way.

Secondly, thestructure of the sentence is really big difference. On the one hand, Englishis ruled by law whereas Chinese is ruled by human.English writing puts emphasis on structure while Chinese writing focuses on meaning.On the other hand, English uses more long sentences to replace Chinese many short ones.

Thirdly, English writing supplies more passive voice while Chinese writing supplies more active voice. When reading English articles, we are not likely to be convinced of the articles with strong subjectivity, but they are be more persuasive. Chinese articles are mostly written in active voice, which is partly related to Chinese culture and social formation in ancient times. Thus,they focused more subjective initiative of human being.

Last but not least, there are many differences in the use of Transition words. English writing uses many transition words to make the composition more methodical. In addition, different kinds of transition words show different language environment.

Some people said that if Aristotle can speak Chinese, he will not be Aristotle; if Confucius can speak English, he will not be Confucius. Different languages develop different thinking ways, which lead to different culture and expression. Instead of a burden,writing as a kind of art should be an expression of the heart.