Euphemisms And Their Translation

According to Habermas, to fulfill successful communication between people, one should acquire both linguistic competence and communicative competence. Euphemism can help people have communicative competence as well as linguistic competence, and it is a common cultural phenomenon, which reflects the historical, the political, the economical and the ideological situations of a nation from a special aspect. Euphemism is also a frequently used figure of speech when we use language, which is true to both Chinese and English. With the development of the inter-cultural communication, the translation of euphemism is doomed to be more and more important. However, the translation of euphemism is not so satisfying in the theoretical field as well as the practical field.Noticing this problem, the paper studies the translation between Chinese euphemisms and English euphemisms. After analyzing the linguistic characters of the euphemisms, the way to show and produce euphemisms, the paper shows some strategies to comprehend euphemisms, then take a reference to the relative theories of Nord's ,Spanish translator Javier Franco Aixela's theory about culture-specific items and levels of equivalence to inquire into the strategies of translating euphemisms.The paper can be divided into five chapters. The scene-setting chapter illustrates euphemisms from several aspects. The chapter includes the definition of euphemism, introducing the non-verbal euphemism and non-conventional euphemism. The chapter also explains the characters of euphemisms, namely, 1 .substitution is the base of producing euphemisms 2.an euphemism has two levels of meanings: a surface meaning and a deep meaning, and the real meaning is the deep meaning; 3.euphemisms are mild expressions which can alleviate the harshness of the original expressions and can cover some of the original purposes of the speaker. The chapter further deals with the ways to produce euphemisms such as substitution, using foreign language, using abbreviation, clipping or partial omission, understatement or deviations etc. The rules governing the ebb and flow of euphemism are the Gresham's Law and the Law of Succession. The function ofeuphemism and the strategies to comprehend euphemisms are also explained in this chapter. Chapter two analyzes the translation of euphemisms, which manifested at least three defects: 1.using non-euphemisms or even taboos to translate euphemism.2.the special taste of the source language generating from using euphemisms is lost in the translated version.3.the vivid description of the source language is lost in the translated version. Chapter three discusses the suitable principles of translating euphemisms. Chapter four inquires the strategies for translating euphemism. Finally, in chapter five, the paper reiterates the importance of the study and proposes some of the prospects of the study.