The Comparison And Translation Of The Coding Of English And Chinese Motion Events:an Empirical Research

The motion event is an important research topic in the field of cognitive linguistics. Nowadays the study on this topic by the researchers in the field of foreign language mainly focuses on two aspects:(1) the similarities and differences of coding and lexicalization of English and Chinese motion event;(2) the application in the translation practice.This paper chooses216cases of motion events from the script of The Old Man and the Sea (both English and Chinese version) to make contrastive analysis about the coding and the process of relexicalization in the selected data that focus on the verbs which are the basic and most important element in motion event. The purposes of this analysis are:(1) to study the variety phenomena appear in the process of translation of motion events between English and Chinese,(2) to make comparison of the coding and translation of English and Chinese motion events,(3) to find their similarities and differences in motion events,(4) to analysis the necessary strategies of translation in recoding of English and Chinese motion events. Then we analyze the selected data to search for the answersto these two questions in such a procedure:(1) locating and classifying of the English core verbs of the motion events.(2) Finding out the Chinese translation of the sentences with the core of the verbs of motion in Chinese texts. And then analyze and classify the meaning of this translation by manual work.(3) Making comparative analysis of the coding of English and Chinese motion events.(4) Making a summary of the strategies of translation in the procedure of transfer English verbs into Chinese verbs.This paper takes contrastive analysis as the main method of study and puts forward two main research questions:(1) what are the similarities and differences in the expressions of motion events in English and in Chinese?(2) What implications do the similarities and differences have for the translation between Chinese and English? The results of data analysis are here:(1) There are statically obvious differences in the constitution of the elements of motion events in verbal structure in English and Chinese corpus (especially the elements of path of motions).(2) When English motion event is translated into Chinese motion event, the verbal structure tends to be added by new elements.(3) There are nine strategies of translation of recoding English and Chinese motion events in the selected data. These nine strategies can be divided into three groups: literal translation, disyllabification, and adding information. The results of data analysis show that the ability of carrying information of Chinese verbs is stronger than that of English verbs. The conclusions that can be derived are here:(1) The study proves that English and Chinese both belong to the satellite-framed language to certain extent;(2) the amount of information in Chinese verbs is higherthan that of English verbs;(3) both the features of verb-framed language and satellite-framed language exist in English and Chinese.The significance of this study is:(1) the flexibility of both of the two languages let translators can handle their results of transformation of motion events more freely than they used to do without too many concerns about the typological limitations.(2) The analysis of the strategies of the translation between English and Chinese motion events can help translators to make sure what strategies should be taken in what conditions. It will also decide whether the translators themselves are "visible" or not in the procedure of translation.(3) The analysis of the directional verbs and the amount of information remind our translators to get the way of develop the linguistic advantage of Chinese and avoid its weakness. Chinese can carry more information with shorter and simpler structure than English. But in the coding of motion events in oral communication, Chinese verbs are not as convenient as English. That is the point that deserves our attention.