The Comparison And Translation Of English And Chinese Address Terms

Address terms are an indispensable part of people's daily life and literary works. Owing to different languages, cultural backgrounds and social structures, there are pronounced distinctions between English and Chinese address terms. The study on the comparison of English and Chinese addressing systems has not only aroused the interest of anthropologists and linguists, but also, is becoming more and more important for cross-culture researchers and especially translators at the era of globalization.There have been various kinds of definitions and classifications of address terms home and abroad. In this thesis, the author, based on the previous study on address terms conducted by scholars home and abroad, divides them into two categories, namely, kinship address terms and social address terms. From the perspectives of sex, seniority and juniority, consanguinity and affinity, patriarchal and non-patriarchal, and paternal and maternal distinctions, Chinese kinship address terms outnumber English ones. And as for the social address terms , the author divides them into two major categories: self address terms (including self-abasing terms, plain self-address terms and haughty terms )and other address terms(including honorific terms, plain other-address terms, endearing terms, abusive terms and zero forms), and then make an systematic analysis and comparison between the English and Chinese social address terms. In terms of both self address terms and other address terms, Chinese address terms outnumber English ones.The differences in culture, language and society lead to tremendous discrepancies between the two addressing systems, which poses a big challenge for the translators and cross-culture scholars. It seems to achieve equivalence is uneasy. Yet it is comforting to find out that quite a few good translations exist in real life and literary works and thus the author selects, analyzes and elaborates some relatively typical examples, and thereby comes to a conclusion that with the help of context and by applying the reasonable and feasible translation theories and strategies, we can achieve translation equivalence.At the end of this thesis the author sums up the merits and some demerits in the study of the comparison and translation of address terms. At the meantime, the author hopes that more profound and detailed research will be conducted in the near future.