Bilingual Corpora And The Improvement Of Translations Of Lexical Units In Chinese-English Dictionary Compilation

This dissertation aims at making constructive suggestions on the improvement of translations of lexical units in existing Chinese-English dictionaries. It focuses on the study of bilingual corpora and translations of lexical units in Chinese-English dictionary compilation. It argues that, for bilingual lexicographers, a criterion for judging whether the translations of Chinese headwords in a Chinese-English dictionary are praiseworthy or not is to see if they have their translations based on an enormous amount of translation material. In view of the fact that the preparation of a parallel corpus entails unexpected inconvenience and enormous labour on lexicographers, bilingual lexicographers are advised to improve the design and construction of such a parallel corpus by building a bilingual lexical database. As for the wise use of such a bilingual lexical database, this dissertation argues that bilingual lexicographers should learn to doubt at points where other people feel no impulse to doubt. The methodology on the part of lexicographers of doubting with an open mind and seeking evidence to clear the doubt is grounded on lexicographers' command of lexicographical, cultural and linguistic knowledge along with their bilingual and bicultural competence. This methodology of "boldness in doubt and hypothesis coupled with meticulous care in seeking verification" will make today's bilingual lexicographers feel entirely at home rather than feel at sea in evaluating the equivalents in the database.For the objective observation of the linguistic behavior of Chinese lexical units in Chinese-English dictionaries so as to facilitate the present study, the present author has built several sample comparable corpora of small size and one parallel corpus of 200,000 words. The translation material for building the comparable corpora is chosen among the Internet resources while the material for building the parallel corpus is from the works by eminent translators. The procedures and the methodology for building these two kinds of bilingual corpora have also been discussed in the dissertation.The findings reveal that bilingual corpora do play an important role in assistingdictionary compilers in choosing English equivalents for Chinese lexical units in Chinese-English dictionary compilation. Specifically, the use of a machine-readable corpus offers Chinese-English dictionary compilers significant advantages over traditional compilation methodology. The corpora provide a more solid foundation to the decision bilingual dictionary compilers have to make in the compiling process and give lexicographical activities increased flexibility and the possibility of responding better to users. In exploring the comparable corpus, the present author finds that by reading the Chinese text and the corresponding English text a lexicographer will be able to highlight the English equivalent that he wants to find for a particular Chinese term with ease and by comparing the concepts of the two terms involved, the lexicographer will be able to establish the appropriate equivalent for that particular Chinese term.The advantages of a parallel corpus are also obvious: 1) it enables bilingual lexicographers to choose more appropriate translational equivalents; 2) it enables bilingual lexicographers to choose appropriate translated examples; 3) it helps bilingual lexicographers to edit the translational equivalents wisely; 4) literal translation and transliteration equivalents with their glosses are of great help to bilingual dictionary compilers; 5) loan words, literal translations and free translations are valuable in the corpus.These advantages have been exemplified in this dissertation with special reference to the translation of encyclopedic terms and culture-specific terms. In discussing the advantages of the parallel corpus, the present author emphasizes that appropriate translations of culture-specific terms do not exist in compilers' minds or in printed dictionaries but hide in the potential corpora.While emphasizing the advantages, the present author has also elaborated the disadvantages exhibited by both comparable and parallel corpora. Generally speaking, bilingual corpora have the following disadvantages: 1) the preparation of the bilingual corpora entails the unexpected inconvenience and enormous labour on lexicographers; 2) some of the translational equivalents extracted from the corpora need to be improved; 3) in many cases, the positions of Chinese lexical items and their translations are not comparable; 4) the translations of Chinese lexical items in the parallel corpus are so contextually dependent that they are not isolated lexical units but either part of syntactic constructions or...