Contrast Between Chinese Collective Classifiers And English Collective Unit Nouns And Their Translation

An unusual phenomenon, in the contrastive study of Chinese classifiers and English unit nouns, is found that there is a large and complicated system of English collective unit nouns but a small and simple system of Chinese collective classifiers. But there is not a more thorough study in this phenomenon. It inevitably causes some difficulties in translation and the second language learning. The contrast between Chinese collective classifiers and English collective unit nouns and the discussion about their translation is trying to help solve the problems in translation and the second language learning.The paper adopts the traditional empiricism that has been used by the former researchers on this topic. Besides the qualitative analysis to discuss the structure and the characteristics of Chinese collective classifiers and English collective unit nouns, the quantitative analysis is also used to observe the frequency of Chinese collective classifiers and English collective unit nouns to reach the conclusion that there is a large and complicated system of English collective unit nouns but a small and simple system of Chinese collective classifiers. As for the content, the paper, wishing to fulfill the practical significance of the topic, not only puts forward the hypothesis and proves the conclusion, but also discusses the translation methods of Chinese collective classifiers and English collective unit nouns either from Chinese to English or from English to Chinese.