A Comparative Study Of English-Chinese Translation Differences Between Mainland Chinese And Macao People

Although Macao is a part of China, the culture of China and the culture of Macao are different. Therefore the language state of China is not the same with the language state of Macao. Some scholars think that Macao is like a plate with different languages while some others believe that Macao is like a Museum of languages.Simplified Chinese characters are used in Mainland China while traditional Chinese characters are used in Macao. Mandarin is spoken in most parts of China as formal Chinese. Nevertheless Cantonese is spoken in Macao as the most common and the most important language in communication. To a certain extent, the vocabulary, grammatical structures as well as syntactic structures used in standard Chinese and Cantonese are different. There are definitely English-Chinese translation differences between Mainland Chinese and Macao people.The fundamental theory frame of this thesis is Jakobson's subdivision of translation. The author studies English-Chinese translation differences between Mainland Chinese and Macao people from the angle of intersemiotic, interlingual and intralingual translation together to analyse lexical, semantic, syntactic and pragmatic translation differences. Traditional translation studies compare English and Chinese, Mandarin and Cantonese, standard Chinese and Chinese in Hong Kong style. This thesis tries to extend traditional studies to English-Chinese translation differences between Mainland Chinese and Macao people.Differences do not always refer to mistakes. Nevertheless differences may cause the problems of inability to understand or misunderstanding. In order to avoid the above-mentioned effects, a translator has to make translations suitable to actual readers. When he / she translate for Mainland Chinese readers, he / she has to use the expressions which Mainland Chinese can understand. When he / she translate for Macao readers, he / she has to use the expressions which Macao people can understand. Moreover the expressions of loanwords, names of places and names of films, etc., should be the same in Mainland Chinese and Macao.Mainland Chinese use modern Chinese while the expressions used by Macao people retain the characteristics of ancient Chinese. As Macao returned to China, the differences of Chinese used by Mainland Chinese and Macao people will become fewer and fewer.