Japanese-Chinese Cultural Untranslatability

Today, as the recognition and research into language and translation become deeper and deeper, translators have no longer emphasized whether translation is possible or not. On the one hand, due to the similarity of the human experience, the same human culture, the function of language to adapt to a new environment, countries or ethnic groups with different languages can meet the needs of communication with each other just through translatability. Therefore, translation is claimed to be possible. On the other hand, it has to be admitted that because of the particularity of different languages and different cultures, untranslatability does exist during the process of translation among different languages.Through the study of the status quo of untranslatability, the present author found that there are a lot of researches on it. Researches on untranslatability between Chinese and English, English and Japanese are much earlier than that between Chinese and Japanese. Moreover, in the field of Japanese-Chinese translation, few researches on language and culture have been done. In particular,the study on the Japanese-Chinese cultural untranslatability is not comprehensive in three aspects: the theories are incomplete, the cause and the solutions are not comprehensive enough. Therefore, in order to enrich the researches on the untranslatability, the author will study the untranslatability caused by Japanese-Chinese cultural differences from the following points.The present thesis, firstly analyzed the causes and the types of untranslatability, that is, the phenomenon of untranslatability is caused by language, history, culture, society and many other factors. And secondly, the article explores the reasons for untranslatability from the cultural aspects, primarily Japanese-Chinese cultural differences. Currently, the studies of Japanese-Chinese cultural differences mainly focused on empty word, idioms and poetry, but neglected some other cultural factors. Here, in order to prevent confusion in the study, the author re-classified culture as two major parts, and then after subdividing, added examples to explore the causes of Japanese-Chinese cultural untranslatability. In this process, the article put forward a cultural factor which has ever not been mentioned at present, to further complete the causes of untranslatability.In the following chapter, nowadays, when resolve the Japanese-Chinese cultural untranslatability, to improve the current situation that concrete methods were applied to solve concrete problems but without system in resolving the Japanese-Chinese cultural untranslatability, the author found out the strategy that can deal with the Japanese-Chinese cultural untranslatability, from a new perspective, i.e., the translation strategy view. It is illustrated mainly from free translation, foreignizing translation and domesticating translation, pragmatic translation and zero translation. Finally, in order to resolve the cultural untranslatability more efficiently, the author mentioned the qualification and ability which the translators should have.In this thesis, he author admitted that the Japanese-Chinese cultural untranslatability always exists. With the development of culture, the old untranslatability can be solved, but at the same time new untranslatability will appear. However, cultural untranslatability is relative, which can be solved. As the communications among the countries become deeper, many untranslatable ones will become translatable, then will accepted by people. The question which this article wants to solve is to make the untranslatable ones become translatable so that the communications can become more smoothly.