A Translation Study Of English Definitions In Chinese-English Dictionaries From The Principle Of Interlingual Lexical Equivalence

Bilingual dictionaries are a bridge connecting the source language and the target language. As a very important tool, they are useful to cultural transmission in all countries. Cross-cultural communication builds on the foundation of translation. Therefore, bilingual dictionaries are often called translation dictionaries in that they offer the users interlingual lexical equivalents. Chinese-English dictionaries translation can be categorized into two types:translation of definitions and that of examples. This thesis, based on The Contemporary Chinese Dictionary [Chinese-English Edition], edited by Ling Yuan, published by Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press in2002, mainly researches the relationship between translation of English definitions and their equivalents.Definitions are the soul of dictionaries, especially for bilingual dictionaries and they are the most important standard to determine whether the quality of bilingual dictionaries is good or not. Because of their specific characteristics, bilingual dictionaries should abide by the principle of equivalence. Zgusta argues that "the basic purpose of a bilingual dictionary is to coordinate the lexical units of one language with those lexical units of another which are equivalents in their lexical meaning". In other words, dictionary translators and lexicographers should coordinate the vocabulary units between the source language and the target language and establish the relationship of equivalence. This thesis tries to study the translation of definitions in Chinese-English dictionaries from the perspective of translation equivalence.In this thesis, the author first reviews the development of bilingual dictionaries, and then introduces the theory of equivalence systematically. In the end, this study concentrates on the analyses of the principle of communicational equivalence. Because of the differences in geographical location, natural environment, cultural traditions, religious beliefs, social backgrounds, economic status and so on, complete equivalence is quite unwonted. Partial equivalence and non-equivalence take a large proportion in Chinese-English dictionaries. Based on the above-mentioned points, this thesis argues that different kinds of vocabularies should take differing principles of translation equivalence. With the three principles of interlingual lexical equivalence, the above problems can be solved with different translation strategies. In this research, the author employs such translation methodologies as qualitative analysis, comparative analysis, case study and induction and deduction.Through the study of translation of definitions in Chinese-English dictionaries, the author hopes that the present study can prompt more systematical and more detailed researches on definition translation in Chinese-English dictionaries. What’s more, the author proposes some suggestions on how to improve the quality of definition translation, in the hope of giving some inspiration to the further study of definition translation. At last, this thesis ends with some implications and limitations of the present study.