| The relationship between culture and language is inseparable. Language is theguide for people to discover or understand the reality around them through culture, inthe way, the meanings of the words can be determined by the culture. The meaning ofa word is not only closely related to the user’s life, but also some of the semanticmeaning of certain words can embody the strong national features and the distinctivecultural personality. Specifically, the semantic change of a word or phrase directly isinfluenced by its culture trend of being rooted in language, such a word or phrase iscalled culture-loaded word. The Chinese word of "Xi" is the one in the type of words.In fact, there are many ways of classifying the meanings of a word, based on theprevious studies in the publications, journals and professional papers, the meanings ofthe Chinese word of "Xi" are divided into four categories in the research, they are: thedenotative meaning, the connotative meaning, the symbolic meaning and theculture-specific meaning.It can be said that a word of a language loads with the objective information fromthe reality and the related cultural concept in it, as language is the lifeblood of everynation and the foundation of its development. Regarding to each language in theworld, it has its own structural forms and unique ways of expressions, and theproblems will be in the translations. In terms of the languages of Chinese and English,there are variable factors to influence the meanings in the translation texts, such as thedifferences of word formations, cultural background, expressing styles, religiousbeliefs and so on. These factors may create errors, and cause ambiguities,misunderstanding and have negative responses to its readers of the English nativespeakers From the literatures and many online translations, the literal translation strategyis still the common way. The translated texts from it often have some errors in syntax,the semantic biased in meanings, and the translations of the Chinese culture-loadedwords and idioms can hardly understood by none Chinese native readers. In the case,this research took the Chinese word of “Xi” as a case, with native English readers assubjects, regarded the Chinese word of “Xi” in Chinese connotative meanings,symbolic meaning and cultural-specific meaning as the dependent variables, thedifferences between Chinese and English culture as the independent variables,together with the methods of survey study, dictionary comparative study, literaturestudy, comparative study and quantitative analysis, study on its meaning differencesand translation acceptability. Specifically, the research is conducted in the theoryof Eugen Nida’s Reader Response Principle of Reciprocity and theory of SusanBussnett’s the Cultural Functional Equivalence, together with the theory of the Britishlinguists---Leech and Lyons’s semantic classification, and analyze the causes in itfrom the perspective of cultural translatability, cultural differences, translationequivalence and semantic differences between the Chinese and English, and thediscussion is from the following four aspects (1) The equivalence or non-equivalencebetween connotative meanings which derived from denotative meanings of theChinese word of "Xi" and the English expressions;(2) The equivalence ornon-equivalence between the symbols of the Chinese word of "Xi" in Chinese culturesystem and English;(3) The English translation forms of typical Chinese idiomswhether can be accepted by the target language readers as well as its acceptance;(4) The influence factors for semantic understanding of the Chinese word of "Xi"and cultural differences.The findings of the research show that:(1) The low acceptable connotativemeanings and cultural-specific meanings of the Chinese word of “Xi” are:“Someonereceives a letter of acceptance”;“There is a refreshing rain after a long drought”;“Newly married couple’s first night”;“Nativity, give birth to a child” and “Marriage”,these meanings’ acceptable degree is high,“A person who has owned a son when heor she was old”;“A baby’s completion of its first month or a hundred days of life”.(2) All the nine symbolic meanings have no corresponding objects in English culture;(3)The translated meanings including allusion and rhetoric have a low acceptance;(4)The understandings of the Chinese word of "Xi" has a close relationship withindividual reader’s Chinese knowledge， cultural background, values；（5）Theunderstandings of the Chinese word of "Xi" has a close relationship with translationquality.The study found that it is impossible to separate a nation’s language from itsculture. Language is a set of symbols used and understood by a large community ofpeople. As an individual, we learn and use our native language as we do because ofour culture background. If we include culture as a variable in the process ofabstracting meaning, the problems become all the more acute, for culture teaches usboth the symbol and what the symbol represents.This thesis is divided into six chapters. The first chapter mainly introduces thepurpose, historical and background, the scope, the significance and the organization ofthe research. The second chapter is the literature review of the study, it mainlysummarizes the previous success of the semantic meaning, previous studies on theChinese word of “Xi”, the culture specific meanings and the translations of it. Thischapter describes the division of meanings of the Chinese word of “Xi”: its denotativemeanings; its connotative meanings; its symbolic meanings and cultural-specificmeanings. This part also provides the outcomes of the previous studies on culture andtranslation, such as Susan Bassnett theory of cultural functional equivalence intranslation, the problems in the Chinese-English translation. The third chapter is allabout the research design, including research methods, research hypotheses andresearch subjects, research materials and procedures for data-collection. The fourthchapter is the result and discussion based on the data from the survey. The fifthchapter is the discussion part, with three parts in it. The sixth chapter is the conclusionof the research, with some suggestions according to the research results of this thesis,the specific limitations of the research and the recommendations to any future study.Generally speaking, the relationship between language and culture is closelytightening together, nothing between them. Language is not only a tool of communication but also the link for people to understand with each other. The studyshows the fact that, while doing a translation, the translator, firstly, has to have abetter knowledge of its own culture; secondly, use a better translation strategy to givethe balance within the cultural differences; at last present an accurate translation.Nevertheless, in the case of the Chinese cultural loaded words, the contrastive studyof cultural translation is very rare at present in China, the present research on thestrong cultural functional word of "Xi" is hope to get the attention of the people in thefield for the better of the Chinese into English translation and the future developmentof the cross-cultural communication. |
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