A Corpus-based Study On The Translated Names Of Philosophical Terms In History Of Scientific Thought

As philosophical terminology is the core in the field of philosophy,its translation is crucial to translingual and transcultural communication of philosophical thoughts.One-to-one correspondence between a term and its translation is an ideal for clear and transparent communication,whereas one-to-many correspondence may frequently occur in translation practices,which causes confusion to target-language readers,and hence hinders international dissemination of philosophical thoughts.Based on the theory of semantic terminology,the study takes History of Scientific Thought by Joseph Needham and its Chinese translation version jointly published by Science Press and Shanghai Ancient Books Publishing House as the research materials.By means of ROST WordParser,AntConc and ParaConc to extract Chinese philosophical terms and their corresponding translated names,the thesis adopts both qualitative and quantitative methods to study: 1)In History of Scientific Thought and its translation version,what is the overall correspondence between Chinese philosophical terms and their corresponding translated names? 2)What accounts for one-to-many correspondence between Chinese philosophical terms and their corresponding translated names? 3)How does Joseph Needham determine his translated names of Chinese philosophical terms?The findings can be stated as follows:Firstly,merely three Chinese philosophical terms and their corresponding translated names present one-to-one correspondence,whereas the rest twenty-seven Chinese philosophical terms and their corresponding translated names present one-to-many correspondence.Secondly,one-to-many correspondence between Chinese philosophical terms and their translated names attributes to the following four aspects: 1)The polysemy of source-language(SL)philosophical terms.It means that one SL philosophical term has more than one conceptual meaning,each of which corresponds to one translated name;2)The synonymy of translated names.Several translated names correspond to the same source language philosophical term.Synonymous translated names are mainly translation variants;3)The semantic uncertainty of SL philosophical terms;4)Mistranslation.There are two reasons account for mistranslation,namely the semantic and cultural misinterpretation of SL philosophical terms.Among the four main reasons,the synonymy of translated names is prominent.The polysemy of SL philosophical terms is the second,followed by mistranslation and the semantic uncertainty of SL philosophical terms.Thirdly,Joseph Needham determines his translated names of Chinese philosophical terms in the following ways: for conventional translated names,he continues to use them;for non-conventional ones,a diachronic analysis is made concerning the changes of their conceptual meaning and the appropriateness of synchronic existing translated names,and then he employs the most proper translated names or replaces them with more accurate ones;for untranslated Chinese philosophical terms,he determines the translated names on the basis of cooperative research by Chinese and westerner scholars.Meanwhile,it is found that the correspondence between Chinese philosophical terms and their translated names by Joseph Needham also does not present one-to-one correspondence,which attributes to translation variants in most cases.The findings may contribute to the accuracy and normalization of Chinese-English philosophical term translation,which can promote the cross-cultural communication of Chinese philosophical thought,as well as scholars and teachers in the field of terminology translation.