A Study Of Zero Translation

With the continuous development of the trend of globalization in world economy, factors like areas, peoples and languages can no longer frustrate the intercultural communications. Language translation is thus been expected to satisty higher requirements on its efficiency and quality. Fortunately, as a result of the development of education, more and more people get the chance to learn foreign languages. They are able to understand some simple words, expressions or even slangs without a translator. This phenomenon is named as Zero Translation. It can fulfil the rapid growth of the demand for translation as well as ensure the information exchanges between different languages.Nowadays, more and more foreign words appear in public announcements, media reports and daily communications with their original forms or transliteration forms. These zero-translated words have already become members of our mother tongue vocabulary. Though being widely used in translation practices, zero translation is still a debatable concept in theoretical fields. There is no adequate acknowledgement and agreement on this new translation term. And its influences on the purity of the mother language has also been discussed.In this dissertation, the author just confines the study of zero translation to the translation between Chinese and English. The above two hot issues about zero translation are analysed in detail with a great support from the experiences of other scholars. Moreover, this dissertation attempts to get a clear definition of zero translation about its connotation and denotation, to justify its positive effects on enlarging the vocabulary of our mother language and enhance the intercultural communications and to expatiate that zero translation is not a tool of language colonization. The objective of this dissertation is to support zero translation theoretically and preview its bright future.Chapter One is introduction to the study background and research objectives, contents, methods and the author's original ideas.Chapter Two involves the previous study of zero translation and draws two hot issues out of the arguments. Firstly, what is zero translation? How to define its concept and classify its translation procedures? Secondly, is zero translation a threat to the purity of the mother language? Is it a tool of language colonization? Chapter Three mainly concerns the first question and expatiates the connotation and denotation of the concept of zero translation. The connotation of zero translation is "zero" or skillful translation. The denotation of it is the proper translation procedures it takes in dealing with translation problems in different areas.Chapter Four mainly concerns the second question and discuss whether zero translation is a kind of language colonization. Nowadays, the diversification is the main trend of culture's development. Zero translation is corresponding to the trend while the viewpoint of language colonization is a sort of culture isolationism.Chapter Five states the powerful reasons for zero translation's emergence and development and the positive effects of it. But we should also be aware that in intercultural communication, zero translation should be used reasonably rather than blindly.Chapter Six serves as the conclusion. The concept of zero translation, its applications in different fields and the proper translation procedures are restated here to prove that zero translation will have a bright prospect.In the previous study of zero translation, scholars used to make comparisons between zero translation and other translation strategies in order to award a justifiable position for zero translation. However, based on translation practices, all the translation theories have to be examined by practice. To analyze the denotation of zero translation, that is, the translation procedures of zero translation, this dissertation sticks to the translation practices. It studies the applicable fields for zero translation first and then analyze the appropriate translation procedures in different areas. Only in this way can the theoretical study be clear and reasonable. This is the original idea of the author.