A Study On English Translation Strategies Of Chinese Expressions Related To COVID-19 Prevention And Control

The COVID-19 epidemic has had a profound impact on all countries in the world since its outbreak at the end of 2019.Facing the epidemic,China has actively prevented and controlled the virus domestically,forming anti-epidemic practices with Chinese characteristics.At the same time,China has promoted international anti-epidemic cooperation and proactively shared effective prevention experiences.In international communication,as a carrier,COVID-19-related Chinese texts and their English translations play an important role in presenting China’s attitude and policies of fighting the epidemic and building a positive national image.Therefore,the quality of the English translation of COVID-19 Chinese texts is particularly important,and a large number of COVID-19 Chinese expressions that emerged are crucial.The English translation of COVID-19 Chinese expressions belongs to the category of pragmatic translation and can be included in the research scope of pragmatic translation theory.Fang Mengzhi,a pioneer of pragmatic translation studies in China,puts forward the “macro-meso-microscopic” pragmatic translation theory.Macroscopic research focuses on translation principles and includes three elements and three principles of pragmatic translation.Mesoscopic research focuses on translation strategies and divides them into three levels: meta-,general,and special strategy,and includes three elements and the triangular schematic diagram of translation strategies.Microscopic research pursues the trinity of grammar,rhetoric,and logic at the level of translation skills.Based on the mesoscopic research in Fang’s pragmatic translation theory,this thesis extracts and analyzes Chinese expressions from COVID-19-related texts published by official and mainstream media.On account of the research on terminology,this thesis summarizes the classification and features of Chinese expressions related to COVID-19 prevention and control(“COVID-19 expressions”for short),as well as the difficulties in translating them into English.Through the analysis at “meta-,general,and special” levels,feasible,efficient,and high-quality translation strategies of COVID-19 expressions are summarized to improve the English translation quality of related texts.In terms of research objectives,through the computer-aided translation software and term management tool,1,087 COVID-19 Chinese expressions and their English translations are extracted.Then,the categories are classified,and the literal translation,free translation,and transliteration strategies adopted are marked.Combined with quantitative data analysis and qualitative research discussion,the research questions of this thesis mainly include the following two points:(1)What are the classification and features of COVID-19 Chinese expressions? And what are the difficulties of their English translation?(2)What are the meta-strategies,general strategies,and special strategies for the English translation of COVID-19 Chinese expressions?Given the above questions,the research results show that:(1)COVID-19 Chinese expressions can be divided into two categories: terms and political expressions.According to their contents,they can be further classified.The main features of COVID-19 Chinese terms are monosemy,systematicity,simplicity,and accuracy.Chinese political expressions are characterized by generality,as well as metaphor,parallelism,and symmetry,which are frequently used.And their difficulties in translation can be summarized as the translation of emerging expressions,and how to make the translation conform to the standard and convey the cultural connotation.(2)According to the frequencies and proportions of the adopted literal translation,free translation,and transliteration,the meta-strategy of the English translation of COVID-19 Chinese expressions should focus on literal translation,supplemented by free translation,and with the combination of transliteration.The general strategy mainly discusses the most widely used literal and free translation strategies.In order to follow different translation principles,specific literal translation strategies,such as convention and word-by-word literal translation,can be adopted.Specific free translation strategies,such as grammatical transformation,omission,and amplification.Meanwhile,a mixture of literal and free translation,such as the semantic-oriented and context-oriented explanatory translation strategies,can be adopted.The special strategy mainly discusses the English translation of COVID-19 Chinese expressions with special structures and cultural connotations.The translation of parallelism can choose to preserve,adjust,or abandon the structure;the translation of metaphor can adopt the strategy of borrowing and discarding imagery;and the translation of traditional Chinese medicine terms can adopt the strategy of transliteration plus literal translation or annotation.This thesis has certain theoretical and practical values.First,translators can directly use the proposed translation strategies and take the collected glossary in this thesis as a reference,thus improving the quality of the English translation of COVID-19 Chinese expressions and texts.Secondly,this thesis provides theoretical and practical references for the construction of a strategic framework for public health event translation from the levels of “meta-,general,and special” translation strategies.Thirdly,this thesis provides a new case for the practice of Fang’s pragmatic translation theory and,to a certain extent,provides reflections on its enrichment.However,because of the limitations of time and capacity,there are still some deficiencies in this thesis,which can be adjusted and improved in future research.First of all,the language resources selected in this thesis are relatively small in scale,and more recent ones are limited.For future studies,the scope of language resource collection can be expanded to enhance the breadth of research.Secondly,the analysis of the translation effect is mainly based on qualitative research,lacking quantitative research evidence.For future studies,the content of quantitative research can be increased,and professional software can be used to analyze translation effects.Thirdly,this thesis mainly analyzes the English translation and strategies of COVID-19 Chinese expressions from a synchronic perspective and at the level of“meta-,general,and special”,which is relatively single and scattered.For future studies,diachronic and unified research perspectives can be combined to conduct a more comprehensive exploration.