A Study On The Translation Loss And Compensation Of Chinese Cultural Words

Cultural words are the minimal units containing cultural elements. They witnessed the vicissitude of culture. But translation loss of cultural elements has directly influenced cultural exchanges. This study focuses on the translation and compensation of cultural words. First, the paper reviews related researches at home and abroad. The second part studies the definition, classification and features of cultural words. The cultural word is related to linguistics and sociology and can be divided into different groups based on different criteria. In linguistics, cultural words refer to a character or four-character idioms which can be seen as a grammatical whole in a sentence. From the aspect of culture, there is difference in degree on cultural elements.In the third part, the paper analyzes translation losses in three aspects:symbol, sound and meaning. The symbol of Chinese is almost untranslatable. The sound is more prone to be translated in cultural words, but it is less translatable than the meaning. The loss of meaning includes conceptual meaning, connotative meaning, stylistic meaning, emotional meaning, and reflective meaning. Usually, translators pay much attention to the transference of conceptual meaning and the connotative meaning, while the reflective meaning is neglected. Besides, the author also covers the loss of rhetorical effect of cultural words.The fourth chapter studies the compensation methods and skills from three aspects:traditional cultural words, reflective meaning and new words. As name words occupy a large amount of traditional cultural words, the paper covers name words of exhibitions and illustrated pictures of statues and paintings as representatives of traditional words. The study shows that there is little compensation of cultural elements. Though the symbols are mostly untranslatable, the author suggests to transfer the symbols in the names of exhibitions like “福”,“壽”,“囍”.The sound is more prone to be translated, but some translations only transfer the sound without further detailed information of the conceptual meaning. The implied meaning, meaning to wish best wishes, could be specifically written on reserved areas. Transliteration plus functional equivalent information is the most commonly used methods in compensation. When the translation of word involves reflective meaning, amplification and replacement are used to transfer the focus and compensate the cultural meaning. The translation of new words is a tough task and a better way is to combine some features in grammar or culture of both languages. The fifth chapter is the conclusion part.