A Study Of The Translation Of Culture-specific Entries In Bilingual Dictionaries

This paper is a study of the translation of culture-specific entries in Chinese-English dictionaries, with examples taken from entries under Y in A New Century Chinese-English Dictionary and New Age Chinese-English Dictionary. Through the study of the different strategies used in translating culture-specific terms in the two dictionaries, it proposes the most frequently used and most effective strategy for the translation of such entries. This study is not only useful to the translation of Chinese culture-specific terms into English, but more importantly, provides reference to Chinese-English dictionary compilers in their choice of entry translation strategies. In addition, it also helps improve the quality of Chinese-English dictionaries.Four chapters, an introduction, conclusion and appendix make up this paper. The introduction elaborates on the purpose, rationale and scope of study of this research. The appendix is a corpus consisting of examples taken from entries under Y in A New Century Chinese-English Dictionary and New Age Chinese-English Dictionary. This study is based on this corpus.Chapter 1 is an overview of translation in bilingual dictionaries. First, I discuss the relationship between translation and bilingual dictionaries. Then I explain the reason why translation is treated as the core of bilingual dictionaries. Types of translation in bilingual dictionaries are also examined in this chapter. Lastly, I elaborate on the features of translation in bilingual dictionaries.Chapter 2 probes into culture-specific entries and their translation strategies. First, I make an overview of culture-specific entries in bilingual dictionaries. Then the two translation strategies, namely, foreignization and domestication, are examined. And finally the methods of realizing foreignization and domestication are introduced.Chapter 3 is the inclination to translate culture-specific entries in the two dictionaries. First, I presuppose the best strategy for culture-specific entry translation in bilingual dictionaries. And then I show the statistical results of culture-specific entry translation in the two dictionaries. Lastly, I analyze the statistical results and give some suggestions for improving the translations of culture-specific entries in the corpus.Chapter 4 is a discussion of some other aspects related to culture-specific entry translation in the two bilingual dictionaries. Firstly, I examine consistency in culture-specific entry translation. In this part, consistency in the use of the dash, of the "be" verb and in the verb form is examined. Moreover, I further discuss about the sense discrimination and cultural equivalence. Finally, I contrast and compare the two distinct ways in translating the same culture-specific entry.The conclusion consists of a short summary of my research in the paper, limitations of this study, and suggestions for further research...