A Study On The Honorifies In Yang Xianyi's Translation Of The Scholars

Language is the cartier of information and culture.Because of the big difference between Chinese and westem cultures,the use of honorifics varies greatly.As a result, some translation strategies have to be applied to adapt to the Target Language and to retain the meaning and taste of the original.This thesis studies the honorifics with the aid of the self-built Chinese-English parallel corpus The Scholars,which is composed of the original Chinese version and Yang Xianyi's English version of The Scholars.In this study,according to the relationship between the speaker and the listener or the object referred to,the honorifics extracted are classified into different-rank honorifics, same-rank honorifics and honorifics for affiliation.The thesis has obtained the following major findings:(1) Due to the different values in different cultural backgrounds,the honorifics in Chinese and English are quite different in ways of expression,frequency and status in their languages.There are more honorifics in number and type in Chinese than in English.(2) In the translation of honorifics,the major strategies used by the translator include a.to translate honorifics into the closest equivalents in English,b.to translate honorifics into personal pronouns,c.to translate the honorifics literally and d.to translate the designative meaning of honorifics with an adjective in front.Among them,the first strategy is most frequently applied.However,other strategies are frequently used too.(3) The translator chooses different strategies to translate various kinds of honorifics,mainly according to the relationship between the speaker and the person referred to in the communication.(4) Different translation strategies have their advantages and disadvantages. Because of the cultural differences,it is difficult to transfer the complete meaning and connotation of the original into the target language.