As we know, figure is an essential element in economic-related articles, which is frequently used to indicate increase or decrease of indexes including revenue, sales, growth rate, etc. In addition, such sentences involving specific figures typically have something in common. Let’s start with some examples.

Example I

Original text:

去年中国商用车销量达到印度的10倍。

Target text:

Automakers sold 9 times more commercial vehicles in China than in India last year.

In this example, the translation of “Automakers sold 9 times more commercial vehicles in China than the automakers did in India last year” can also be deemed as an accurate translation. However, it is obvious that this translation is not as succinct as the translation in the last paragraph. When we confront sentences in which sales of a specific product in two different countries are compared, we can make the translation as follows: product manufacturer sold/has sold XX times more + certain product in Country A than in Country B + time (certain month, quarter or year).

Example II

Original text:

2012 年，印度汽车销量达到 1200 万辆，同比增长 10%。

Target text:

Car sales in India rose 10 percent year on year to 12 million units in 2012.

In this example, the object of comparison differs from that in the last example. In the last example, the comparison is made between the sales in two countries while in this example the comparison is made between the sales in two consecutive years. When we confront sentences involving such comparison, we could make the translation as follows: product sales in Country X rose/expanded/dropped xx% year on year to + specific amount in + specific year. If the comparison is made between the sales in two consecutive months of the same year, we could make the translation as follows: product sales in Country X rose/expanded/dropped xx% month on month to + specific amount in + specific month. If the comparison is made between the sales in two different months or years, the translation could be as follows: product sales rose/expanded/dropped from + specific amount in + specific month/year to + specific amount in + specific month/year; or product manufacturer sold XX times more product in Period A than in Period B.

Example III

Original text:

这是 10 年来中国汽车销量首次出现下滑。

Target text:

The decline is the first for China’s auto market in recent 10 years.

The sentence pattern can be summarized as follows: decline/decrease is the first for Country X’s XX market in recent XX years.

Apart from these sentence patterns, there are also many common sentence patterns used in economic-related articles. As a professional translator, we should form the habit of accumulating such sentence patterns in daily reading so as to make the target text better comply with the expression mode in English when making C-E translation.

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