| Word is of great importance in the process of translating Chinese into English, no matter how we translate Chinese into English. Only after we have a better understanding of both Chinese and English words, can we be more skillful in translating Chinese into English at a higher level. While at present, due to the complexity and variability of word, the study of word is rather weak, which undoubtedly affect the further development of translation from Chinese into English towards accuracy.In this thesis, the author will perform a study on both Chinese and English words, aiming at working out an appropriate approach to translate Chinese words into English, basing the principles of Contrastive Studies, especially the methodology put forward by Liu Miqing, which are"where to base oneself on", stressing both"similarities"and"dissimilarities", descriptive approach,"structure"and"function"as well as the criterion, one is"comparing like with like"; another one is finding"tertium comparationis"(TC for short) when there are variables between the two languages that compared with each other.The author first gives a detailed description of both Chinese and English words respectively mainly on the basis of the language instances under the following several aspects: 1. the general characteristics of word; 2. the word formation and word making; 3. the lexical meaning; 4. the use of words, like grammatical rules, collocation, expression, etc., which both Chinese and English words share similarities, basing the author herself on Chinese words, taking English words as reference, and then perform a comparative study under the purpose of working out an appropriate approach of translating Chinese words into English, especially highlight these difference between Chinese and English words.The results are as follows:1. For the general characteristics of words, suggested methods of recognizing Chinese words are two steps, three criteria and two notes.2. For the word formation and word making, the author found that Chinese words are more flexible than English words, so we should make appropriate judgements accordind to different situations.3. For the lexical meaning, the relationship between Chinese words and English words can be summered up into three kinds: equivalence, intersection, and non-equivalence.4. For the use of words, Chinese words show the weakness in indicating word classes and syntactic function and are no inflectional changes. In the translation from Chinese words into English, we need to pay more attention to the collocation and avoid a kind of"none plague".All in all, the best way to analyze Chinese words is basing the five levels: 1. the components of the words; 2.the relationship of the inner structures; 3.the way of showing the meaning of the words; 4.the different meanings of the components in the different words; 5. the degree the components show the meaning. Besides, in Chinese, some compound words and phrases are always confused, so we should distinguish compound words from phrases by the criteria: pronunciation, the quality of components, and the structure of components.The translation of words mainly depends on the transformation of meanings between Chinese and English words. Based on the contrastive studies in their lexical meanings, the author mainly explored the nine strategies of translating Chinese words into English, i.e. literal translation, explanation, extension, transformation, defiguration, amalgamation, substitution, transliteration, exegesis as well as the norms in translating words, and discusses the translation of Chinese lexicalization redress for English inflexion based on their similarities in function. |
PDF Full Text Request