An OT Analysis Of The Transliteration Of English Personal Names

At present, the transliteration of personal names in China is in a chaotic situation. Problems such as wrong or improper transliterations of personal names and different transliterations for the same personal name exist in books, journals, newspapers, radios, on TV and the Internet. There are many reasons accounting for this problematic situation:linguistic, historical, and cultural, among others. This thesis focuses on the linguistic aspect.As a matter of fact, the transliteration of English personal names is a complicated process. The correspondence between the English and Chinese segments and syllables is the basic and crucial link. Furthermore, when phonological symbols are converted into Chinese characters, factors such as the choice of the characters, tones, and the rhythm of transliterated names should be considered. However, the attention paid to these factors has been insufficient. This thesis probes into the transliteration of 115 English personal names from the translations of the novel Gone with the Wind with the guidance of Optimality Theory (OT). It takes four factors into account:the phonological correspondence between English and Chinese, the choice of Chinese characters, the relation between stressed English syllables and the tones of corresponding Chinese syllables, and the rhythm of transliterated names.The significance of the thesis is that it puts forward a new way of transliterating personal names by applying OT. The thesis proposes two hierarchical rankings guiding the selection of optimal transliterated personal names. The ranking for phonological correspondence is*COMPLEX, CODA-CON, CHI-σ>>MAX-IO >>DEP-IO>>S-IDENT (pal., lab., apic.) >> EPEN /γ/>> CLOSE-IO (V) >>CLOSE-IO (C). The overall ranking for characters, tones and rhythm is*UA >> SIMPLE >> CFN >>*CCS>>GENDER >> REL-CORR (TS-≥TU-) >>*E-E,*U-U >>*T-T END-SYL. The two rankings are expected to be applied in the future study of transliterating personal names. Furthermore, the 115 English personal names transliterated with the guidance of OT can be used for reference in the work of revising and standardizing the personal names in the Chinese version of Gone with the Wind.