3．3. 1 General Procedures of Translating Long English Sentences长句翻译的总体原则
The translation of long English sentences is often “a hard nut to crack” for translators，since long English sentences are very complicated in structure，involving various logical and grammatical relationships．It is not easy to distinguish a long sentence＇s structure at a glance．For example，a modifier in a long sentence is sometimes separated from its headword by intervening words or phrases，and such a phenomenon often leads to misunderstanding of the entire sentence．Still，a modifier may qualify several headwords or a headword may be qualified by several modifiers．Even if the translator can fully comprehend the SL sentence，it is not easy to convey its meaning in fluent Chinese．In spite of such difficulties，it is still possible to translate long English sentences well if we adopt the follow procedures to handle them:
1．Divide a long English sentence into meaningful groups and identify the main clause and the subordinate clauses．
2．Distinguish the logical relationships between modifiers and their headwords，determine whether other elements are inserted between modifiers and their headwords，find out whether a headword is qualified by several modifiers or whether a modifier qualifies several headwords．
3．Analyze the logical relationships among the meaningful groups(including the time order of actions)．
4．Translate the meaningful groups into individual Chinese short sentences．
5．Based on the logical relationships among the meaningful groups of the SL sentence，rearrange the Chinese short sentences in logical order，adding necessary connectives and deleting redundant words so as to make the translation cohesive and concise．
6．Revise and polish the translation by referring to the SL sentence．