A Contrastive Study Of Negation And Its Translation Between English And Chinese

Negation is one of the most common phenomena in language. In every language in the world there is the notion of negation, but the ways of expressing the notion of negation are not the same;they vary to some extend from one language to another. Negation occupies an important position in linguistic communication and, therefore, the study of negation has been an important research topic for linguists for a long time. This thesis has made a contrastive study of how the notion of negation is expressed in English and Chinese, and, on the basis of the study, the thesis has explored the techniques of translating the notion of negation between English and Chinese.In the contrastive study, negation is first classified into marked negation, unmarked negation, predicate negation and non-predicate negation in terms of form, and then, in terms of meaning, it is classified into sentential negation, local negation, partial negation, full negation, double negation and transferred negation. Following the classifications, contrasts are made between English and Chinese in expressing the different notions of negation. The findings of the contrasts show that there exist similarities and dissimilarities between English and Chinese in the ways of expressing the notions of negation. The general fact is that the notions of negation are expressed by more diversified and complex means in English than in Chinese.In the exploration of the techniques of translating negation between English and Chinese, the thesis, under the guidance of functional equivalence, has proposed equivalence in meaning and equivalence in style as the criterion for the translation. In order to realize the two equivalences, the thesis has proposed three translating techniques: literal translation, transferred translation and counter translation. And, byapplying the three techniques, the thesis has succeeded in the translation of the different notions of negation between English and Chinese. Literal translation has been applied to the translation of sentences or expressions of which the form and the meaning correspond to each other in both English and Chinese;transferred translation has been applied to the translation of sentences or expressions in which the negative meaning has been transferred from one place to another in the source language;and counter translation has been applied to the translation of sentences or expressions of which the form and the meaning in the source language are contradictory to those in the target language. The results of the translation prove that these techniques are effective for the translation of negation.The thesis points out at the end that, due to the diversity and complexity of the expressions of negation as well as the variety and colorfulness of situations of communication, the selection of techniques for the translation of negation is sometimes influenced by the context.