| Time orientation is the general realization and understanding on time, and it isformed during the process in which people understand and create the world. On the onehand, the temporal expressions in English and Chinese represent the differentgrammatical structure of two languages. On the other hand, the research on themprovides an effective tool for people of different cultural background could betterunderstand other’s social culture. Although the previous researches pay attention to thecontrastive analysis on temporal expressions of two languages, most of them make theirresearches from linguistic perspective, and few of them combine culture element andlinguistic phenomena for an explanatory on them. Actually, a language can not livewithout culture. It serves as one of significant parts of language and deep influenced byculture. Therefore, this paper helps to make researches on the English-Chinesetranslations, deepens the comprehensives on time, improves the teaching effectiveness onforeign language teaching, and provides a new research perspective on two languages’temporal expressions.Take intercultural comparability into consideration, the paper selects Red Sorghumand its translation as major linguistic data. Red Sorghum is one of the most representativeworks of Chinese writer Mo Yan, who is the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature.This book was translated into nearly twenty languages and has published all over theworld. The novel tells a long story about the three generations of a family, so it contains agreat many of temporal expressions. At the same time, A Comprehensive Grammar of theEnglish Language is selected as complementary linguistic data. It is compiled by famouslinguists Randolph Quirk and Geoffrey Leech, etc. The Chinese version is translated bytranslation group of Soochow University, which influences a generation’s Englishgrammar study. There are mainly three research questions around the topic: To whatextent will the English tenses corresponded with Chinese temporal expressions? Whatare the characteristics of these correspondences and differences? And what are thecultural elements behind these grammatical phenomena? This study is based on Hall’sCultural Theories, at first, it makes a contrastive analysis on English tenses and corresponded Chinese expression, then finds their linguistic characteristics. Furthermore,it explores the cultural elements of linguistic phenomena. The paper uses the contrastiveanalysis. It makes contrasts from form, meaning and context aspects, and then finds thecharacteristics and principles, and finally analysis the cultural elements.The findings of this study are mainly represented from three aspects. First,compared with English temporal expressions, Chinese usually makes part of temporalmeanings implied in the context. Therefore, the totally correspondences between the twoare ten. Second, the correspondences and differences reflect the universality andindividuality of the two languages. This means that time orientation is the elementaryconcept in each of them, and it is different for the influence by different culture. Third,the cultural characteristics–high-low context and polychromic-monochronic time arereflected through analysis. It fully shows that the deep cultural elements for the linguisticphenomena. |
