Translation Of Culture-specific Words In The Chinese-English Dictionary For Foreign Learners

Chinese is becoming more and more popular among foreign learners of Chinese. However, as important tools for foreign learners, existing Chinese-English dictionaries fall short of productive and receptive needs of foreign learners in terms of the translation of culture-specific words. This thesis is an attempt to find problems with the translation of such words and ways to improve the translation of them in the Chinese-English dictionary for foreign learners. A word may have the following meanings, namely, conceptual meaning, connotative meaning, affective meaning, rhetorical meaning, stylistic meaning, pragmatic meaning, grammatical meaning and collocative meaning. Some meanings tend to be culture-specific. Therefore, a culture-specific word in the present thesis refers to a lexical unit that has at least one type of culture-specific meaning. The most important duty of bilingual lexicographers is to find in the target language lexical units that are equivalent to the lexical units of the source language, and to coordinate them. Culture-specific words pose a thorny problem for bilingual lexicographers because no equivalents can be found in the target language for them. Usually, translation methods like transliteration, literal translation, free translation, approximate translation, and descriptive translation are used to translate culture-specific words. Besides, supplementary measures like glosses, pictorial illustrations, illustrative examples, usage labels, cultural notes, usage notes, and cross references can be adopted to convey the meaning of those words in bilingual dictionaries.Existing Chinese-English dictionaries are found to have the following types of problems concerning the translation of culture-specific words: (1) lack of equivalent or inadequate equivalents; (2) lack of glosses where needed; (3) insufficient cultural background information; (4) insufficient usage labels; (5) insufficient usage notes; (6) lack of pictorial illustrations; (7) insufficient illustrative examples; (8) lack of crossreferences; and (9) improper language of general direction.In order to solve the problems in the translation of culture-specific words, the present author proposes that the following be done by the lexicographer-translator: (1) try their best to create equivalents for culture-specific words; (2) add glosses to the newly created equivalents; (3) provide cultural background information for words that have rich connotative meaning and words of allusions; (4) provide detailed usage labels; (5) provide usage notes for words with a heavy load of culture-specific pragmatic meaning; (6) increase the use of illustrative examples; (7) provide pictorial illustrations, cross references; and (8) give directions in all the notes, labels and glosses in English.