A Tentative Approach To The Chinese Neologism Translation In Recent Two Decades

Vocabulary is the most active component in a language. This is reflected in the increase of neologisms with the appearance of such things as new objects, new phenomena, new ideas, new discoveries, new inventions and even new feelings in a society. Actually the appearance of neologisms with the changes it has brought to language is the unavoidable consequence of the linguistic development mechanism in vocabulary. With the enhancement of China's open policy and China's entrance into the WTO, great changes have taken place. All these changes have, to a large extent, been reflected in the language we use among which the most direct and representative indication is vocabulary. That is why we have so many new words with new senses and new usages. It is estimated that about 700 Chinese neologisms have been produced each year(Wang Tiekun 1992). On one hand, the increase of neologisms has enriched our language and our culture. On the other hand, it has affected our communication with other countries. Therefore we should regard the translation of neologism as an urgent necessity. But the C-E neologism translation is not satisfactory due to the fact that it is such a new field that the study on it both practically and theoretically is far from being explored. This can be explained by many factors among which two of them desire our due attention. For one thing, C-E neologism translation is difficult because of the unique features of neologisms. For another, we do not have a standard translation principle to follow to judge the correctness of different versions given by different translators. Consequently many mistranslations have been produced and this undoubtedly has led to our failure in our foreign exchanges in some aspects with other countries and the inefficient publicity of our country to the outside world. This actually is what prompts us to give a serious thinking to C-E neologism translation. We think that it is time to have a thorough study on C-E neologism translation and we hope that our efforts in this field will prove to be worthy in enhancing people's understanding of neologisms, thus promoting the transmission of language and culture. Because those neologisms which appeared in recent two decades are endowed with new rich content and are more representative, this thesis will focus on them.This thesis begins with the researches into neologisms. This part includes the study of many aspects as the definition, origins, and features of Chinese neologisms, the status quo of Chinese neologism translation, difficulties and mistranslations in the translation of Chinese neologisms. Then in order to improve the current conditions of Chinese neologism translation, we borrow Eugene A. Nida's theory of functional equivalence and use it as our theoretical basis in the translation of Chinese neologisms. With our close study of Nida's theory and under the guidance of the principle of functional equivalence, we draw our conclusion that the overall requirement for C-E neologism translation is the attainment of the maximal equivalence between the comprehension and appreciation of source neologism readers and that of the target neologism readers. Translators are suggested to follow this requirement in the assessment of C-E neologism translation. We go a step further on the analysis of the feasibility of domestication and foreignization with specific examples. We believe that both of the two strategies are useful in the C-E translation of Chinese neologisms. The underline point is that translators should adopt different translation strategies considering different purposes and different translation situations. Though they are more mutually supplementary than contradictory, we can see there is an orientation of foreignization in the process of Chinese neologism translation through sampling analysis. At last, different techniques are listed to embody the usage of domestication and foreignization with many examples.