On The English Translation Of Chinese Neologisms From The Perspective Of Functional Equivalence

Vocabulary is the most dynamic factor in language. Any kind of new phenomenon is able to bring neologisms into language, and we are able to observe the changes of society and culture through the neologisms. The continuous appearance of new words and gradual dying out of old words are the rule of the development of vocabulary. Since China implemented the policy of reform and opening up, a large number of neologisms have rushed into our life. These neologisms are like a big mirror faithfully reflecting changes in the fields of human society, people’s ideology and social customs. With the futher improvement of China’s opening up policy and China’s entrance into WTO, English, as an international language, becomes more and more important. Facing the increasing appearance of Chinese neologisms, the translators have a duty to translate these new words in time accurately, which is also one part of our publicity to the outside world.Though many studies have been concentrated on English translation of Chinese neologisms, the studies in this field are still not optimistic. There are many problems existing in the translation of Chinese neologisms. One of the main problems is that usually there might be several translations for one neologism, as the translators have no unified principles to follow. Another problem is that there are many mistranslations appearing in this field. The problem of mistranslation has badly affected China’s cultural exchange and foreign economy as well as impaired the publicity to the outside world. In order to avoid this problem and make translation achieve a better standard, namely,"faithfulness, smoothness and elegance", translators all have obligation to make a deep study of the nature and source of the mistranslation existing in the translation of Chinese neologisms. Due to the lack of a theoretical guidance, there appear many problems in translation versions, such as low quality and so on. In this thesis, through many examples collected in this field, the author found there are several factors contributing to the mistranslations of Chinese neologisms:the differences between Chinese language and English language, the thought patterns, the cultural differences, understanding factor, translation strategies and translator’s competence. On the basis of Eugene A. Nida’s Functional Equivalence, this thesis designs to provide a theoretical guidance for us to guide the translation of Chinese neologisms, through analyzing the different problems in the translation of Chinese neologisms. At last, the author comes to the following conclusions:Accuracy is fundamental to the translation of Chinese neologisms. A thorough understanding of the new words is the prerequisite to an accurate translation. When translating Chinese neologisms, we should deal well with the relationship between faithfulness and smoothness. Firstly, the translation should be faithful to the meanings of the neologisms by faithfulness. Secondly, a readable rendering of the neologisms should be obtained by smoothness. The translation of Chinese neologisms highly requires the competence of the translators, so a competent translator should have a wide knowledge of Chinese and English, culture, society, and have an ability to look at things from a broader area. Last but not the least, the translators should do more practice so that translation techniques may be further improved.