Vitality Variance Of English-Origin Loanwords In Chinese And Their Translation

Loanwords are the product of language contact and cultural exchange. Chineselanguage has been communicating and exchanging with different languages to get itenriched. As English becomes the de facto international language, loanwords ofEnglish-origin play unique and important role in the Chinese vocabulary, and researchon them is certainly of significance not only for the study of evolution of loanwordsthemselves but also to the Chinese language as a whole. This thesis focuses on theproblem of vitality variance of English-origin loanwords in Chinese. It can be noticedthat loanwords show variances in their vitality of serving the language. Someloanwords show strong vitality ever since they were borrowed, such as "沙发","幽默","卡片","马克思主义"; and some loanwords are relatively weak in that afterprevailed for a time they were gradually out of use and substituted by othercorresponding words expressing the same meaning, for example,"德律风"wassubstituted by the new word "电话","德谟克拉西" substituted by "民主","巴力门"substituted by "议会", to name just a few; Besides, there are also some otherloanwords show resilient vitality in that after being dormant for a while they bounceback to serve the language again with autochthonous neologisms created to substitutethem, for example,"麦克风" is used again with "话�'" and "沙司" with "酱汁".Research in this thesis aims at exploring the rules of vitality variance ofloanwords and figuring out possible factors affecting this thus to offer theoreticalguidance to the future translation of new English concepts. This study takesquantitative research as main way to make thorough understanding of thephenomenon. By collecting loanwords from different dictionaries and literatures andanalyzing their different vitality, qualitative comparison is concluded as follows. Puretransliteration serves as the main way to absorb English concepts in the early stage,but pure transliterated loanwords have relatively weak vitality; transliteratedloanwords tends to be substituted by later autochthonous neologisms but nowadays the tendency is being challenged. The phenomenon must be due to combined action ofmany factors. This paper explores reasons from the viewpoint of the requirements oflanguage habits, economy principle in language using, psychology of divergence andconvergence, and the restraint of translation mechanism of "faithfulness,expressiveness and elegancy" respectively and considers that it is the words whichcan accord with the language habits, have simple forms and at the same timeaccurately and elegantly express the original meaning that will have strong vitality.Based on analysis of factors affecting vitality of loanwords, the thesis further putsforward some directions for the future translation of new English concepts to makesure the words better serve Chinese language. When translating new English concepts,people should try to use free translation as the main method in order to create newwords that can accord with Chinese language habits, and choose transliteration whenit can show advantages in both form and content; adopt different principles andflexible strategies in different situations, thus make free translated words andtransliterated words together enrich the ways of expression in Chinese and meetdifferent needs for different people and different context of situation; and becauseeconomy principle is greatly affecting language using, so in any case, make sure thewords simple and easily accessible. Studies in this thesis are carried out from specificdata to general rules, from phenomena to their explanations, from results tosuggestions, and hopefully to be constructive to the development of Chinesevocabulary.