A Corpus-based Study Of The Lexicographical Translation Strategies Of Chinese National Musical Instruments In Advanced Chinese-English Learner’s Dictionaries

Learner’s dictionaries,also called active dictionaries,are compiled for the learning of language,especially for the language production.As the most important part of the microstructure of the bilingual dictionary,the lexicographical translation of entries is the core issue of the dictionary-making.Adequate lexicographical translation is the key to improve the quality of bilingual dictionary compilation,and it helps the learners to master and use authentic language.However,problems like incomplete lexicographical translation,separating the needs of users,and neglecting the application of corpora still exist.Thus,this thesis will study the lexicographical translation of cultural words in bilingual dictionary from skopos theory and user’s perspective to solve such problems.This thesis has selected Chinese national musical instruments as study objects to probe into the lexicographical translation strategies of culture-specific words in Chinese-English learner’s dictionaries.The culture-specific word with unique cultural characteristics is a special and important category in the vocabulary and its lexicographical translation is also one of the difficulties in bilingual dictionary-making,but suitable definition plays a quite important role in cross-cultural communication.The thesis first proposes the lexicographical translation methods of culture-specific words according to skopos theory in translation and the user’s perspective in lexicography along with the characteristics of such words.Then,the lexicographical translation of target entries in CED3,CED2,CED1,NCCED2,ABCCECD and TCED3 will be investigated to find out the problems and reasons.The ultimate aim of the study is to provide translation strategies for the improvement of the compilation quality of dictionary based on the skopos theory in translation and the users’ perspective in lexicography with the help of corpora.The study found that only one third of the Chinese national musical instruments items in the above six dictionaries are provided adequate lexicographical translation to the learners due to the difficulties in the translation of cultural words and thetraditional compilation method like compiler’s perspective and introspection.It concluded that the lexicographical translation of culture-specific words in Chinese-English learner’s dictionaries should provide translational and explanatory equivalents for the dictionary users.As an empirical research on the lexicographical translation of Chinese national musical instrument entries in Chinese-English learner’s dictionaries based on the corpora,it is expected to further the theoretical studies on the lexicographical translation of culture-specific words and to improve the compilation quality of Chinese-English learner’s dictionaries.