A Study On Cultural Adaptability Of English-originated Loanword Translation

Loanword is the inevitable outcome of the contact of different cultures and languages. As an important witness of communication and interaction between different countries and cultures, loanword is an important cultural phenomenon in society and powerful resource for vocabulary expansion. With loanword being continuously introduced to China, they are now everywhere in Chinese people's daily life. Chinese language expression is largely enriched and Chinese character system is imperceptibly influenced by loanword. Loanword is not a simple phenomenon. It is related to many different factors, of which language and culture are the two main inseparable and interacted factors. As part of language and cultural phenomenon, loanword study as well as the study of loanword translation should not be confined to either language or culture. Both language and culture factors should be taken into consideration.Although the study on loanword has been undertaken for many years, scholars have not reached an agreement on the definition and category of the subject "loanword". In addition, most studies involving loanword translation are concerned only about some translation techniques from the perspective of pronunciation and meaning rather than probing deeply into the factors that affect or decide the ways of translation.By integrating Verschueren's adaptation theory and Malinowski's cultural context theory, this thesis explores the interactive relationship between loanword translation and Chinese cultural context from two angles: one is the contextual correlates of adaptability; the other is salience of adaptation process. Based on the redefinition and category of loanword, language corpus of loanwords commonly used in modern Chinese is analyzed to investigate the influence of Chinese cultural psychology, thinking pattern and cultural connotation of Chinese characters on loanword translation. The impact of loanword on Chinese language is studied from two aspects: Chinese vocabulary system and Chinese writing system. The thesis reaches the conclusion that much more attention need to be paid to the adaptation of Chinese cultural context in the process of loanword translation. Therefore, the success of loanword translation largely depends on the salience of adaptation to the cultural context of Chinese language. Chinese people's cultural psychology and thinking pattern and cultural connotation of Chinese characters influence and constrain the translation and acceptance of loanword; meanwhile, loanword translation brings about certain impact on Chinese vocabulary system and Chinese writing system.In this thesis, the integration of adaptation theory and cultural context theory in loanword translation study introduces a new perspective in cultural translation studies and promotes the feasibility of the theory as well.