A Report On The Semantic Transfer Of Nouns In The English-Chinese Translation Of Merchant Mariners At War

Merchant Mariners At War,a significant historical account of World War ?,tells us about stories in the War in an oral way.Those veterans vividly recounted their extremely dangerous experience in the parlous and gloomy World War ?.It's worth considering how to retain,in translation,the true meanings of the words contained in the humorous story-telling by the veterans.Small units as the nouns are,they have strong functions and undergo flexible semantic transfer in translation.The author of this report intends to discuss the English-Chinese translation methods for the nouns based on the case study data from the Introduction and Chapter One of the source text Merchant Mariners at War.Two major problems were found in translating nouns when dealing with contextual and cultural differences,which are:nouns' meaning serves as reference;meaning gap between different cultures and nouns' meaning change flexibly in specific context.In order to produce a desirable translation,the author has further analyzed the methods of semantic transfer in the third chapter--Case Study.In this chapter,the author makes a detailed analysis in an attempt to find a pragmatic and effective solution to the semantic transfer of nouns in translation.The research conclusion is as follows:First,semantic extension can help translate nouns'meaning concerning metaphor and metonymy.Second,taking advantage of literal translation,semantic explication would effectively fill the gap caused by cultural differences.Last,when semantic extension doesn't work,translation methods such as transferring nouns' parts of speech and addition guided by semantic variation can realize semantic equivalence.Through this translation practice,the author found that the methods of semantic transfer make it clear and systematic for translating nouns.It is hoped that the present study is of some theoretical and practical significance to the translation of nouns in maritime texts.