A Relevance-Adaptation Model Of Chinese Neologism Translation

Language is one of the basic instruments for human communication and vocabulary is the most active element in language. The neologism is a kind of vocabulary that reflects new things, concepts, ideas, experience, problems and so on. Since the reform and opening up to the outside world, a great number of Chinese neologisms have emerged in our daily life and been translated into English. Although so far, the Chinese neologism translation has achieved great development, there are still many problems existent in those translation versions such as mechanical literal translation, random translation, redundant translation, cultural mistranslation, cultural missing and the like.This research takes Relevance-Adaptation Model as the theoretic framework and tries to explore a new path of interpreting Chinese neologism translation. Through data analysis of the translated versions of Chinese neologisms collected from the newspapers, magazines and Internet, the present research is aimed to answer the following four questions: (i) How to describe the process of Chinese neologism translation under Relevance-Adaptation Model? (ii) What kinds of criteria can be chosen that guide the Chinese neologism translation under such a model? (iii) What types of concrete strategies for Chinese neologism translation can be chosen within such a model? (iv) How to sketch a relevance-adaptation model for Chinese neologism translation?Under the framework of Relevance-Adaptation Model, the whole translation process can be divided into the interpreting process and the producing process. In the interpreting process, the translator tries to seek the optimally relevant interpretation that matches the original author's intentions in creating a particular neologism while the producing process is a dynamic process in which the translator adapts his or her formal or strategic choices to the linguistic, cognitive, psychological and socio-cultural contexts so as to produce adequate contextual effects on the potential target language users and create readable translation versions for them.Some general findings have been drawn from the present study. Firstly, Chinese neologism translation is not only an ostensive-inferential process that seeks optimal relevance but also a dynamic process of adaptation to the contextual correlates, in which the translator should continuously make choices among a wide variety of translation criteria and strategies. Secondly, Chinese neologism translation should make a choice among the guiding criteria of faithfulness, smoothness, conciseness, clarity and expressiveness and the like. Thirdly, in order to reach above criteria, Chinese neologism translators should further make choices among the following strategies: adding missing message, free translation, literal translation with notes, imitation translation, back translation, and creation of"China English"by means of transliteration, direct translation and coinage. Fourthly, the application of R-A model in Chinese neologism translation helps to fill the lexical gap, facilitate the target readers'understanding, make up for the cultural default and spread the characteristic Chinese culture.It is concluded that Relevance-Adaptation Model is really of help for the Chinese neologisms translation. And it is hoped that the relevance-adaptation model for Chinese neologism translation proposed in this research can provide a new theoretic perspective for further similar translation practice.