A Memetic Study Of Copying-fidelity In English Translation Of Chinese Phatic Communion

In1997, Andrew Chesterman first introduced “meme” into translation theory,stating that translations are “survival machines for memes”. From then on, scholarshave dedicated themselves to the study of Memetics, and great achievements havebeen made. Professors in China have been studying the application of memetics intranslation and trying to find a new way for keeping fidelity (equivalence) intranslation.As a carrier of culture, phatic words have their own space in internationalcultural exchange. In the theses on phatic words translation I’ve read,“functionalequivalence” is employed by most writers. According to memetics, there is a loss of“copying-fidelity” in these translations, which are functionally, not culturally,equivalent.To keep the copying-fidelity of the cultural memes in Chinese phatic words, Isuggest translators to transform those English greetings with Chinese-cultural-memewords to make a translation both acceptable in English culture and successful inkeeping the copying-fidelity.