A Study On Connotations And Translations Of Chinese Character Qi

Recently, the rapid growth of international interest in Chinese culture has demanded more English works of traditional Chinese language and culture. In the meantime, the study of learning and translating Chinese classics is necessary. However, due to the great differences between China and West in culture, language, belief and values, the interpretation of a large number of basic concepts in the English translation is still in need of discreet consideration and further improvement, especially the interpretation and translation of Dao(道),Qi(气) etc. Following the many of famous scholars in this field, the author has touched translation of Chinese traditional classics and Traditional Chinese Medicine. Throughout our learning, the concept "Qi" is one of important original factors in the Chinese classical philosophy and aesthetic aspect. Many scholars have got profound learning about the concept of "Qi" with their own opinions, among whom are Sarah Allan, Porkert Manfred, Graham, Augus C and a lot of famous Chinese scholars. As is known, "Qi" in Chinese character is basically built as "川". From the structure of the character, we can find "Qi" is considered as an abstract concept, which is constructed with the character"无"and the radical",,,,", (that is炁in Chinese character). "无"in Chinese means "nothing", while",,,," refers the water or something existing in real life. So it seems that the original cognition of。"Qi" is a process for nothingness to appearance or existence.Recently the way to translate "Qi" is diverse. The most common standard for translating "Qi" is taking Chinese Pinyin "Qi" in place. In this way, it may be convenient for the philosophers to illustrate the traditional Chinese philosophical theory. However, solely applying Pinyin may cause a lot of misunderstanding or mistakes in translation. So the study on connotation of Qi and its Translatability and Untranslatability is the paper's goal.There are five chapters in this thesis. The first chapter serves as an introduction of the paper. In this chapter, the relationships among the language, culture and translation are analyzed in details. Afterwards, the importance of cultural translation for the purpose of globalizing is discussed according to the analyses,Chapter two discuesses the origin and development of Qi from the philosophical viewpoint and its use in several Chinese classics in an attempt explore its rich cultural connotations.Chapter three provides the theoretical foundation of this thesis. In this part, the historical theories of Chinese classics translation are described. Then it presents the basic concepts of the Nida's translation theory. A number of examples are listed for strengthening the illustration of the theory.Chapter four discusses the application of the theory in the translation of traditional Chinese classics, and analyses comprehensively the main connotation and English translations of Qi.The last chapter is the conclusion. In view of the findings in the precious four chapters, the thesis further proposes some suggestions for translating the Qi into English. The study of this thesis intends to shed some light on translation of the culturally-loaded concepts in traditional Chinese classics.