The Construction Of Chinese And English Term Database Of Manchu Ulabun

Manchu Ulabun is an old form of narrative literature created and narrated by Manchu people,mainly inherited through word of mouth.As an intangible cultural heritage of China,Manchu Ulabun is in face of extinction with the passing away of those aged inherited Manchu storytellers.Now over 50 Ulabun works have been preserved and published,but the large majority of those preserved works are still unknown to international readers with only few works translated into English.In order to make the cultural treasure known to the English world and improve the efficiency and accuracy of future Ulabun translation,especially those terms with cultural connotation,we initiated the project of the construction of Chinese and English term database of Manchu Ulabun to provide uniform term translation.This thesis first gives an introduction to the background,purpose and significances of the research.Then it introduces Ulabun studies,Ulabun translation studies,term database studies both at home and abroad.Bilingual term database construction is introduced,followed with the procedure of the term database construction,which consists of five steps:term extraction,term selection,term translation,term application and term maintenance.During term database construction,the process of term extraction from the representative works of Manchu Ulabun with the use of term management tool SDL MultiTerm is introduced and the examples of term translation on the basis of cultural translation theory are explained in detail.So far,3824 terms have been saved in Manchu Ulabun term database,covering Manchu weapons,names of places,animals,Manchu accessories,Manchu tribes,Manchu musical instruments,Manchu appellations,etc.This thesis further discusses the difficulties and the solutions in term database construction of Manchu Ulabun,such as the standard of Manchu cultural term selection,the limitation of term extraction and the way to deal with polysemous terms and synonymous terms in the database and quality assurance of terminology in the database.It is expected that the research practice may shed some light on term databases construction and lay a foundation for future Ulabun and Manchu literary translation.