Contrastive Analysis Of Negation In E&C & Its Implications For Interlingual Translation

Negation, a universal phenomenon in all languages, has varied ways of expression from country to country because of different life background, life styles and thinking modes. The differences between Chinese negation expressions and those of English often cause discrepancy in understanding. Moreover, the different habits of using negation are also a major source of difficulty in English writing for Chinese learners. Either in English-speaking countries or English-as-a-second-language countries, negation appeals a lot to researchers, for its complexity, richness, as well as ambiguity.This paper has done the research work from both the theoretical and the empirical perspectives, by integrating various branches of linguistics, like general linguistics, contrastive linguistics, with translation, as well as literature. More importantly, this paper has introduced corpus linguistics into contrastive study, which was rarely done, and has based all the study on facts rather than on imaginary data. So far as its content is concerned, this paper, after a brief overview of the contributions made by the researchers in the field, carries out a contrastive study of negation between English and Chinese, by using two classic novels, one Chinese and the other English, as well as their respective translation in the other language, as the corpus. By dividing all types of negation into two basic categories, namely virtual negation and real negation, the paper compares negative structures of the two languages on the morphological, lexical, phrasal, and syntactic levels, so that the similarities and differences can be identified. It also examines the preferred negative structures in both languages so as to determine which types of negation are more favored in writing, particularly in literary writing. More importantly, with the reference to the translation techniques of Peter Newmark, the chapter has put forward suggestions as to the interlingual translation techniques of negation structures, after sampling the translation techniques in application in the corpus. In detail, generally, five techniques, i.e., word-for-word translation, literal translation, faithful translation, free translation as well as idiomatic translation, are favored more than others in E/C translation of negation. But, in terms of the C/E translation of negation, four out of the above five, except idiomatic translation, are preferred. Finally, at the end of the paper, conclusions are made as well as its significance in language teaching and learning. Besides, the shortcomings and deficiencies of the research are displayed as well so that the thesis can be instructive for further research in the field.