| Unlike monolingual dictionaries, the essence of bilingual dictionaries is the translation between two languages. In other words, the essence of compiling bilingual dictionaries is to find the correspondence of two language symbols. That maybe is the reason why they are often called translation dictionaries. The translation in English-Chinese bilingual dictionary mainly involves the translation of headwords and the translation of example sentences. Translation strategies vary according to different types. The choice of translation strategies exerts profound influence on translation quality. Translation quality determines the quality of English-Chinese bilingual dictionaries. However, there are still some controversies over the translation of example sentences.Examples are one of the most important components in bilingual dictionaries. The translation of example sentences can, on the one hand, help Chinese learners with the comprehension of the headword. On the other hand, it assists Chinese learners in understanding the meaning of headwords and meanwhile provides them with semantic, grammatical, pragmatic and even cultural information. In translation practice, example translation should not only maximally reproduce these functions, but those renderings should also conform to the Chinese way of expressions. The translation is supposed to reflect inter-language differences and guide translation. However, the features of example sentences make example translation a particular demanding task. So far, a lot of example translation studies still focus on the dictionary text, which restrains the further development of example translation study.In this thesis, the author firstly sums up the function of examples and example translation. Then, the author probes into the unique features of example translation based on the comparison between example translation and literary translation. Afterwards, the author introduces the basic ideas of the reception theory. Furthermore, the author expound on the example translation from the perspective of RT. The purpose is to shift the attention of example translation from the text to the dictionary user, and stress dictionary users'needs in example translation practice. Through the study of the example translation, the author proposes some advice on how to improve the quality of example translation, in the hope of to give inspiration to the further research of the example translation. |
