- 上一篇：从女性主义角度解析《献给艾米丽的玫瑰花》
- 下一篇：从奥巴马就职演说中探析美国价值观
Chinese specific terms, representing China’s social customs and cultural characters in language, are used to express the unique things in Chinese culture. This kind of words is too numerous to list. How to successfully transplant these terms to the English culture is always the goal of many translators. But because of the regional and cultural differences, it is not possible to find one completely equivalent word in English, which not only meets the English expression, but also retains the connotation of Chinese culture. Moreover, there are vacancies in Chinese cultural connotation due to the translators’ own cultural background and deviations in the understanding of English words. Therefore, proper translation of such words and phrases is really significant for us to make an in-depth research.
The flexible ability of using translation strategy is a reflection of the translator’s basic ability. This paper mainly focuses on the study of translation strategies used in translating Chinese specific terms. The ultimate purpose of this paper aims at building a bridge for bilingual cultural exchange and learning Chinese-English translation strategies much better.
II. An Overview of Chinese Specific Terms
Chinese specific terms come from a given social and cultural context in China. They are rooted in the history of Chinese traditional culture, which embody Chinese culture, and people’s thinking models and styles. Due to the differences of geographical environment, social history, customs, religious beliefs, aesthetic value orientation and so on, different countries use different words to express the same idea to show the uniqueness of cultural traditions. Chinese specific terms are the carrier of Chinese culture. Since the reform and opening-up, the communications between China and the western countries have been increasing day by day. Chinese specific terms are used more and more frequently. Chinese specific terms clearly reflect the unique cultural phenomena and play an indispensable part in the international communication. However, what are Chinese specific terms? This part tries to explore the nature of Chinese specific terms from the perspectives of its definition, classification, and characteristics.
2.1 Definition of Chinese Specific Terms
Chinese specific terms such as idioms and adages usually originate from historical events, mythologies, fables, legends, etc. They are established by the people through long social practice and widely used among the people. All of the specific terms have rich content and profound meanings. China is an ancient but young country. It is ancient because it has a long and splendid civilization. The traditional Chinese culture is both extensive and profound. With the increase of cross-culture communication and the development of globalization, the Chinese has also created neologisms tinged with Chinese specific features. Ancient civilization and forward-moving culture constitute the unique Chinese culture. Thus Chinese specific terms are eventually emerged.
“Specific” means relating to one particular thing, which is not a general concept. In Chinese dictionary, specific can be defined as the peculiar or meaningful style. Chinese specific terms indicate exclusively different or particular words literally. The term “specific” mentioned here should be positive and meaningful things that symbolize the culture and can be popularized all over the world, rather than those strange and exclusively monstrous or even inherently corrupted or demoralized things in a given cultural community. Thereby Chinese specific terms should possess two qualifications. One is that Chinese specific terms in one culture should be new to other cultures; the other is that Chinese specific terms should reflect the positive factors of culture.
From the definitions above, it is clear that Chinese specific terms are peculiar to the Chinese culture and have no equivalents in English and other languages. These kinds of words or expressions usually relate to the fields of politics, economy, history, society and daily life, etc.