On The Translation Strategies Of English And Japanese Euphemism From The Perspective Of Semantic And Communicative Translation

As a special language form and cultural phenomenon, euphemism is serving as a "lubricant" for language communication and a bridge for harmonious interpersonal relationship, to ease the opposition and misunderstanding during daily communication. Translation, as a bridge between different cultures, has positive influence on improving intercultural communicative competence and dealing with cultural gaps. Euphemism is widespread in the world’s national language, so is the English and Japanese (hereafter refers to E-J). In China, especially the coastal cities, the frequent using of Japanese and English have a sudden increase, and boost the interactive communication between English and Japanese. The quality of E-J euphemism translation will directly impact on the effect of E-J cultural exchange.There are relatively more mature and perfect studies on the Sino-English and Sino-Japanese euphemism, but few on the comparison of English and Japanese euphemism, not to mention the translation of E-J euphemism. Theoretically, a comparative study of E-J euphemism and translation strategies could perfect the euphemism translation on one side, and provide reference for subsequent researchers on the other side. Practically, at the present, China’s big cities, especially the coastal cities, have a sudden increase in the frequent using of Japanese and English, which greatly facilitate the E-J communication and the demand for E-J translation talents. Study on E-J euphemism translation conforms to the global trend of economic globalization. This can not only avoid the inconvenience and hindrance caused by misunderstanding and mistranslation of E-J euphemisms, but also facilitate the cultural communication between different countries.Taking Newmark’s communicative translation and semantic translation as its theoretical foundation, this paper sums up some appropriate translation strategies through the contrastive analysis of E-J euphemisms, the exiting translation principles and inadequacies of E-J euphemism translation. The first chapter of this paper studies the essence of Newmark’s translation theory, that is communicative translation and semantic translation, including such aspects of communicative translation and semantic translation as their definition, advantage and disadvantage, differences, function and effect, and the role they plays in this paper. Furthermore, the literature review on the study of E-J euphemism at home and abroad is also discussed in the first chapter. Chapter Two is the comparative study, which includes the comparison of E-J euphemism and taboo, the principles and inadequacies of E-J euphemism translation, so as to serve the translation strategies discussion for E-J euphemism. In Chapter Three, some translation strategies will be summed up by the guidance of Newmark’s semantic translation and communicative translation theory with examples.Some major research findings from the result of this investigation could be borne out as follows. Firstly, using only semantic translation or communicative translation during E-J euphemism translation both have one-sidedness, which required the specific translation strategies should be based on the actual environment and occasion. Secondly, in order to achieve better translation results, strategies for E-J euphemism translation of this thesis can be largely classified into three parts, that are, strategies under the guidance of communication translation, semantic translation and the combination of communication translation and semantic translation.