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A Study On Chinese-English Translation Of Culture-loaded Numeral Expressions In Journey To The West

Posted on:2009-04-18Degree:MasterType:Thesis
Country:ChinaCandidate:D TongFull Text:PDF
GTID:2155360248954795Subject:Foreign Linguistics and Applied Linguistics
Abstract/Summary:PDF Full Text Request
Numerals used for counting is a universal phenomenon of all languages. With the development of human society, the function of numerals in language develops correspondingly. Numerals have various cultural connotations in different culture background. This thesis studies the numeral expressions with the aid of the self-built Chinese-English parallel corpus JWC, which is composed of original Chinese version and Jenner's English version of Journey to the West. Culture-loaded numeral expressions include four-character idioms, proverbs, allegorical sayings, antitheses, numeral acronyms and some Chinese unique expressions.The thesis has obtained the following three major findings:(1) The Chinese texts in the original version obviously prefer numerals to the English version. The basic numerals represent 3.08 percent of the whole Chinese characters, which are much higher than the general English corpora like LOB, Brown and AHI. The percentage in Jenner's version is smaller because of different cultural and functional usages.(2) The numeral expressions can be classified into fixed structure numeral expression, single whole numeral, numerals in juxtaposition, numeral idiom and numeral antithesis. The major translation strategies include numeral preservation, numeral omission and numeral transformation. The numeral preservation takes the leading position, but other strategies are also rather common in translation process.(3) The numerals in Journey to the West can be used to name the characters and places, where literal translation strategies are usually adopted. Some numerals and their multiples relevant to the doctrine and plots of the novel appear repeatedly. The multiples usually adopt the literal translation.
Keywords/Search Tags:numeral expression, translation, culture, parallel corpus
PDF Full Text Request
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