On Translation Of Kinship Terms

The question of the relationship between language and culture, together with that of cultural barriers in translation has drawn an increasing attention of translation researchers. This dissertation is dedicated to a proposal for a study of the translation obstacles between English and Chinese kinship terms with a cultural and pragmatic approach. Certain stumbling blocks in translation of kinship terms are explored, mainly concerning kinship terms used for true family relationship and used as social deixis. Some suggestive translation strategies are also presented through a cultural perspective on tackling such problems in translation.The dissertation consists of four chapters. Chapter I offers a general review of the study of kinship terms and terminology. Chapter II elaborates on Chinese kinship terms and their cultural connotations, including the differences between Chinese and English kinship terms and their communicative functions. Grade as one of the semantic features of kinship terms has been covered in this chapter as well. The author in Chapter III first examines and analyzes translation barriers resulted from cultural differences in English and Chinese kinship terms. Some translation strategies concerning the rendering of kinship terms from English to Chinese or vice versa have been discussed with cultural translation studies as the theoretical foundation and guideline.Based on the above-mentioned study, the author in Chapter IV tries to state that translation, a complex task with many extra-linguistic factors involved, should not be considered a sterile linguistic exercise happening in a vacuum, but an act of intercultural communication in situation, a matter of making intelligible a whole culture. Thereby, the translator should be both bilingual and bicultural to achieve a satisfactory translation of kinship terms.