A Study Of The Translation Of Chinese Network Catchwords Into English From The Cross-cultural Perspective

The emergence of internet has brought about impressive reform to human being’s basiclife. Internet has become one of the popular tools in this new era and it has also become asignificant media for people to communicate. With the evolution of the internet, people cancommunicate with each other in a new fashionable way. Therefore a new language callednetwork catchwords is occurred. As a special language, these words do not only boast theirbasic meanings but also have some connotative senses. They have some cultural connotations.Therefore it is significant for translators to render them into English accurately. The Englishtranslation versions can be a bridge for foreigners to have a glimpse of Chinese culture, thusdeepening the westerners’ understanding of Chinese culture.Cross-cultural communication began in the1950s and the foundation stone of thisdiscipline was The Silent Language written by American anthropologist Edward Hall, who is“the father of intercultural communication”. In this book, cross-cultural communication firstoccurred. He had a research on relations of language, culture, and communication. He holdsthat language is the carrier of culture while culture is the record of the formation anddevelopment of language. Translation is more and more important as it is the medium forcross-cultural communication. Translating Chinese network catchwords into English can getforeigners know about China and thus achieving the aim of communication between Chinaand foreign nations. Consequently it is essential to conduct research from the perspective ofcross-culture.In this thesis, the author cites a lot of Chinese network catchwords appeared nearly adecade. They are from the following collections: Chinese Network Language Dictionary in2001, Yu Genyuan; Language Situation in China:2012, and Chinese Network CatchwordsRankings from the year of2005-2014. In addition, through the method of online collection,the thesis collects Chinese network catchwords widely used in internet forum, such as Tianya, Maopu, Renren, Baidu Post, Xi ci hu tong, Sina etc.Through putting to use many widely accepted translation versions of Chinese networkcatchwords, the thesis conducts a research of the basic meaning and its connotative senses ofthese catchwords. In a sense, the conventional translation methods are applicable to Chinesenetwork catchwords translation because of the inheritance of language. By analyzing thesewords and based on some relative translation theories plus translation experiences, the authorcomes to the conclusions: Due to cultural differences exceeds cultural similarities, whichdetermines the translation strategy we choose from the cross-cultural perspective should givepriority to domestication and supplemented by foreignization. The Chinese networkcatchwords is a special carrier of culture and becomes a significant instrument tocommunicate with other countries. Given this, translators should according to the uttermostcultural transmission and communication principle. As well as applying domestication as apriority and develop his initiative ability to adopt flexible translation approaches in order toachieve the purpose of cultural transmission and communication.The Chinese network catchwords mirrors various ways of people’s life and to translateit into an accurate and authentic English is of great significance. To translate Chinese networkcatchwords into target language can make foreigners know China more deeply and thusrealize cross-cultural transmission and communication goal.