| A language in the world used by an ethnic group is a system existing in the combination of pronunciation and meaning, vocabulary and grammar, which is the outcome of long-* growth and of the collective creation by the ethnic group through ages. No language is independent of its culture, or rather, they are quite closely related. A language is the carrier of its culture and the culture exerts its influence on and instills into the language. A language reflects the cultural features of the ethnic people that use it. Therefore, an ethnic group's language will go ahead with its deep cultural connotations.The study, in which culture and the branch of linguistics, i.e., semantics are combined as an orientation of research, has resulted in the birth a new branch of linguistics, the so-called A Study of Linguistic National Conditions. This term was initiated by E.M.Bepewarhh and B.T.Koctomapob, two scholars of former Soviet Union in 1971. Professor Wang Dechun, a noted linguist at home, has argued that it could better express the cultural connotations of this research field if we would use Folk Custom Semantics in replacement of A Study of Linguistic National Conditions. Ever since Professor Wang Dechun's suggestion, the term folk custom semantics has been used until now and it has become a hot topic in the related academic field in recent years.Folk custom semantics is a branch of the study of semantics within linguistics. According to the seven types of the division of the meaning by Geoffrey Leech, the associative meanings are folk custom meanings to a certain extent. As is Professor Wang Dechun's definition, "folk custom semantics is a sort of manifestation of national traits in terms of semantics, which reflects the history, culture and folk customs of a country in which a certain language is used. It bears the obvious characteristics of the national culture." Folk custom semantics can also be regarded as those words with no equivalents easily available in another language, that is to say, as the so-called "non-equivalent words".A language can express its native national culture as well the culture of the others. For this reason, it is possible for human beings to communicate with each other and to exchange their different national cultures. Folk custom semantics is an aspect that best represents the connotation of a language and its culture. Therefore, it is an important task to transfer folk custom meaning or in other words, to do translation relevant to the conveyance of folk custom meaning in a satisfactory manner, which can pave the way for intercultural communication. The reciprocal translation in relevance to the English and the Chinese folk custom meaning forms an essential part of translation studies and weighs a lot in the mutual understanding and communication between the English-speaking and the Chinese-speaking people.This thesis is intended for a 4-perspective study of the different modes of folk custom meaning between English and Chinese! (1) absentia or void (non-existence in the target language); (2) parallel; (3) confliction; (4) coincidence.The absentia of folk custom meaning refers to the phenomenon that the meaning of word can be found only in one language without the corresponding meaning in another language. The absentia occurs due to the fact that the English language community and the Chinese language community differ from each other in social, historic arid cultural background, in folk customs, in geographic environment and religious beliefs.The parallel of folk custom meaning means that both the English and the Chinese express the things ofiiisimilar concepts in different ways. Owing to their different living conventions, the ways of thinking and value systems, though the English and the Chinese have the same or similar signified concepts, different language expressions can be involved either in English or in Chinese.The confliction of the folk custom meaning in English and Chinese refers to the phenomenon in which the concepts are corresponding but different...
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