A Preliminary Research On The Strategy Of Zero Translation In Contemporary Chinese Context

The use of language may be the most critical thing in the development of human society. Without language, human being may still live a primitive life. Similarly, translation plays an equally important role because it bridges the communication gap between peoples speaking different languages. In recent years, with the fast development of science and the enhancement of cross-cultural communication, different languages have gradually got out of isolation and kept increasingly inter-related with each other. Under such circumstances, translation also bears some influence, especially in translating new terms. The author finds a special phenomenon in daily life and-translation practice—the direct borrowing of some English terms in the Chinese context, e.g. "GDP", "CPI", "DVD", "NBA", "CT", "MV", etc. Due to the fact that Chinese is an ideographic language, this is quite different from the strategy of borrowing adopted in the translation between alphabetic languages, such as English and French. The term "borrowing" seems to be too broad for this translation phenomenon. Some scholars put forward the concept of "zero translation" to research on it; however, some others deny this new strategy. Since "zero translation" was first discussed in.2001, up until now, we still have not had access to finding such an entry in any translation dictionary, whether it is Chinese or English. But the fact that zero-translated terms are popularly used in our daily life gives the author enough reason to research on it. With the title of "A Preliminary Research on the Strategy of Zero Translation in Contemporary Chinese Context", this paper will try to figure out a reasonable and systematic understanding of zero translation.We are still at a preliminary stage in the study of zero translation and so first-hand research resources are quite limited. Besides, controversy about this concept still exists. In doing this research, the author will mainly compare zero translation with other related concepts. This can help us form a clear understanding of the new strategy. Then the meaning of "zero" will be talked about to further our understanding. In addition, this paper will look into the status quo of current Chinese language, which may offer great support for the feasibility of zero translation in contemporary Chinese context. It is hoped that the paper might raise people's awareness of zero translation and give it a reasonable position in translation study, thus making some contribution to the development of this new strategy.