On The Borrowings Between Chinese And English

Starting with accounting the historical development of borrowing between Chinese and English, this paper provides detailed coverage of translation methods and application consequences of loanwords, quoting abundant examples of borrowings between the two languages.Totally, the paper includes five parts. The first part is a general introduction aimed to clarify the purpose and significance of the research, to make familiar with the research achievements on this realm, to indicate that more efforts should be taken to the study of borrowing, and to let know the rough idea and motive of this writing.The second part is a breakdown of borrowing evolution between Chinese and English. Firstly, the writer provides the definition and reasons of lexical borrowing, and also the working forces in the borrowing process. Next comes to the analysis on development and sources of borrowing from Chinese to English. When dealing with borrowing from English to Chinese, such aspects as chief periods and degrees of integration are examined to induce the prospective trait and trend of the English-Chinese borrowing.The third part expounds the translation of borrowed words and expressions. Following the significance of translating loanwords, the principles of the translation are proposed to be understandability, acceptability, conventionality and applicability. Based on numbers of comparisons and analyses, five popular translation means are summed up: transliteration, free translation, explanatory translation, hybrid translation and transference.As the creative focus of this paper, the fourth part demonstrates the application and consequence of lexical borrowing between the languages, highlighting the inappropriate back translation, semantic extension and trademark translation. A closer scrutiny is taken into those forces against the healthy development of the reciprocal borrowing, with an attempt to indicate the descriptive rather than prescriptive nature of the borrowing phenomena and to invite more discussion on this very issue.