On The E-C Translation Of Psychological Terms

As international academic communication is becoming more frequent and intensive, the weight that translation carries in cross-language transmission of terminology has never been so heavy. This is especially true with modern Chinese psychology, whose conceptual system of terminology is virtually borrowed from the West, and terms translated from English constitute a major part. However, the quality of E-C psychological term translation is not very satisfying, and deficiencies can be found in many ways, such as mistranslation and over-translation, which hinders the development of Chinese psychological studies.Failing to take terminological motivation i.e. conceptual meaning of terminology into consideration is the fundamental cause of these problems. The concept of terminology is the starting point of term denomination; therefore it is also the focus in terminology translation. Through the observation of the research data collected, the present author discusses the conceptual meaning changes in the process of translation due to linguistic, cultural and translator related factors, as they may lead to under or over translation and even mistranslation.To address major issues of Chinese psychological term translation, three specific questions are to be answered in this paper:1) what is the status quo of E-C translation of psychological terms, methods in particular?2) Has the conceptual meaning been changed in the term translation process in related E-C translation? What are the major types of changes if it has?3) How to improve E-C translation of psychological terms in a terminological approach? These questions are closely related and are to be explored from the terminological perspective, with the focus on the conceptual meaning of a term. The following are the major findings of this research:1) Five major translation methods:zero translation, transliteration, literal translation (including word for word translation), free translation and hybrid translation are used in psychological term translation. However, the limitation is evident:not enough attention has been paid to the conceptual meaning of terminology in the translation process.2) Two categories of conceptual meaning changes due to translation are further identified, namely:the deviation and loss of the conceptual meaning. The accuracy in conveying the conceptual meaning is often hindered by such changes.3) To improve the quality of psychological term translation, more work is to be done regarding the conceptual meaning of a term. By referring to Saussure’s well-known linguistic dichotomy between the "signifier" and the "signified", the present author categorizes terminology translation strategies into three major groups that includes translation strategies on the signifier and signified levels respectively, and the hybrid translation strategies. The conditions in which they are applicable are also discussed; in the end a tentative model for term translation is proposed.Starting from the study of the conceptual meaning of terminology, the present author examines its different types of changes and translation strategies for avoiding them in E-C translation of psychological terminology. The findings in this paper may be of some value in helping construct theories for term translation in general. In addition to that, the tentative model proposed is useful in guiding term translation practices.