An Empirical Study Of The Actualization Of The Principle Of "Translating By POS" In Chinese-English Dictionaries

The research of Chinese word classes constitutes the knotty problems with lotsof questions unsettled in linguistic history, while accurate recognition of POS (partsof speech) is the basis and precondition for the headwords translation inChinese-English (C-E) and Chinese-Foreign language dictionaries. In recent years,the labeling of parts of speech (POS) in Chinese-English dictionaries has receivedmore and more attention and some scholars have made delicate and thorough studies.However, problems such as whether it is necessary to translate according to ChinesePOS have not been settled, on account of the theoretical inadequacy of Chinese itself.Many scholars prove that translating by POS in bilingual dictionaries is a must andWang Renqiang (2006) proves that C-E dictionaries have basically followed theprinciple by investigating the disyllabic words of O-Z parts in eight dictionaries.Wang Renqiang (2007) first proposed making the “principle of translating by POS” atheory to follow for headwords in bilingual dictionaries, and illustrated itssignificance in practical dictionary-compiling in a meticulous and deepgoing way.Yet, from the aspect of lexicography, the whole sample study is almost a blank.Therefore, the thesis is aimed to make an investigation on the whole samples of eightauthoritative dictionaries to check the realization of translation according to POS,and finally it will answer through empirical study.To further the study, this thesis aims to testify the following two hypotheses:(1)disyllabic words from A-N parts in the same eight dictionaries follow the principle of“translating by POS”;(2) disyllabic words from A-Z parts in the same eightdictionaries follow the “principle of translating by POS”. Based on quantitative andqualitative studies, a DIY database of the eight dictionaries is established. Besides,Center for Modern Chinese Linguistics PKU (CCL) and Chinese Modern NationalCorpus (CN) are also taken into account.4201headwords with different POSlabeling are collected and are divided into about78kinds, of which six are analyzedwith emphasis. It is found that most disyllabic words from the eight dictionariesfollow the principle of translating by POS, and this logical result is caused by guaranteeing the accuracy of the headwords translation.This study can further strengthen the significance and necessity of the principleof “translating by POS”, as well as contribute to deepening the research of modernChinese ontology.