A Tentative Study Of Chinglish From Translation Angle

As a bridge among different languages, translation plays an important role in facilitating the international exchange of politics, economy and cultures. Problems in translation arise due to the discrepancies of historical backgrounds, culture and custom among different nations as well as the carelessness of translators. As far as Chinese-English translation is concerned, the major problem lies in the existence of Chinglish. Chinglish is misshapen English with Chinese characteristics. (Li, 1993: 18) It imposes Chinese language and cultural conventions on English expressions at lexical, syntactical, textual, cultural and rhetorical levels. Since Chinglish is neither Chinese nor English, it not only brings about the confusion and misunderstanding among English readers, but more seriously, hinders the cross-cultural communication between China and the outside world. Therefore, it is time to highlight the problem and conduct researches on it. The previous studies exploring the causes of Chinglish are in light of the theory of second language acquisition. As Chinglish is a kind of mistranslation, this thesis aims to analyze the causes of Chinglish from translation angle.The first chapter makes a brief introduction to Chinglish. To begin with, a common ground is drawn from various definitions proposed by scholars from home and abroad: Chinglish is the misshapen English interfered or influenced by Chinese. In the second place, the origin and evolution of Chinglish are described in a historical perspective. Finally, Chinglish is compared with China English so as to make is clear that the thesis aims to dig out the causes of Chinglish, the misshapen English instead of China English, the standard English. Having categorizing the manifestation of Chinglish in term of lexical, syntactic and rhetorical level in Chapter Two, the author tentatively probes into the cause-and-effect between the lack of translation competence, the misuse of methods as well as strategies and Chinglish in Chapter Three. In these two chapters, sufficient examples with adequate explanation are provided to depict a clear picture of Chinglish and prove the author's viewpoint on the causes of Chinglish. In discussion of Chinglish due to inappropriate use of translation methods and strategies, the author analyzes from both linguistic and cultural perspectives and emphasizes that the misuse of literal translation and domestication results in the emergence of Chinglish. On the basis of the above discussion, the thesis comes to the conclusion that only when one is proficient in both Chinese and English, well aware of the differences between two cultures, and has the knowledge of translation theory, can he create an accurate translation.