A Study On Untranslstability Of Chinese Neologism And Translating Strategies From Perspective Of Deconstructionism

Deconstructionism, also known as Post-Structuralism, is a trend of Post-modernism philosophy started in the mid of 1960s. The most outstanding feature of Deconstructionism is its revolt against Structuralism and tradition, which means that Deconstructionists stoutly dismantle the metaphysical thought of Logo-centrism. As the founder of Deconstructionism, Jacque Derrida creates the concept of "differance" According to the deconstructionist way of reading, the meaning of a text is forever "differed" in spatial dimension and "delayed" in temporal dimension. In other words, the meaning of a text is never "present" and fixed, but can be infinitely interpreted as a result of "play" of "trace". Deconstructionist ideas and way of reading provide a reasonable theoretical framework as well as a brand-new perspective for the study of untranslatability of some Chinese neologisms.The last decade has witnessed a dramatic increase of Chinese neologisms which is just like the mirror of social reality reflecting the changes of economy, social life, science and entertainment, etc. Thus, the study of Chinese neologisms translation is a vital part in cross-cultural communication. However, previous studies mainly focused on these aspects such as translating strategies, principles or the comparative study on Chinese and English neologisms based on Functional Equivalence Theory, Relevance Theory or Skopostheorie. Few studies have touched upon untranslatability of Chinese neologisms, let alone studying it from perspective of Deconstructionism.Therefore, based on a framework of Deconstructionism, the author attempts to conduct a tentative analysis on the main sources and the rich cultural and psychological connotations of some Chinese neologisms under the guidance of deconstructionist reading strategies so as to dig out the cultural and linguistic untranslatable elements. Through an in-depth and systematic study on the chosen cases, the author finds that many Chinese neologisms are characterized by anti-tradition in writing and pronunciation. The distinctive language and stylistic features of Chinese neologisms vividly reflect people’s helplessness, self-mockery and struggling in the face of cruel reality. The author believes that it is too hard to present the distinctiveness and anti-tradition of some Chinese neologisms in translation, which brings a new round of untranslatability. The author also sorts out some flexible translating strategies so as to preserve the originality and distinctiveness of the original as much as possible.