Non-correspondence In Word Meaning And Its Implication For Translation--With Special Reference To English And Chinese

As an activity of communication, translation involves the multifaceted transfer of information from one language to another. The translator is constantly looking for lexical equivalents between the source language and the target language. However, this is sometimes a very complicated process. It is attempted in this thesis to explore the non-correspondent nature of word meaning between English and Chinese from semantic and cultural perspectives and highlight its significance to bilingual translation. Generally speaking, there are more cases of non-correspondence in meaning than correspondence between English and Chinese words affected by many factors, notably cultural factors. Semantic factors leading to non-correspondence in word meaning mainly involve differences in sense relations and collocational range of two languages. The translation of non-correspondent words in English and Chinese is largely dependent on the context, which requires the translator to pay attention to the nuances of meaning and avoid a translation that does not fit in. At the same time, it should always be kept in mind that translation is not simply a matter of language, but also of cross-cultural transfer. Language is bound up with culture in multiple and complex ways. The intimate relationship between language and culture proves that the meaning of words and expressions not only depend on the linguistic context in which they occur, but also on the larger cultural context. At the lexical level, non-correspondence in cultural connotations is most evident and easy to detect, which is reflected in lexical gap, phenomenon of alse friends?and different cultural images and associations in two languages.