A Study Of Japanese Loanwords Under Foreignizing Translation

Translation has a long history as a bridge of communication. Although thetranslation has long been progressed together with the development of humancivilization, the construction of systematic translation theory has become difficult.Since1980s, Nida’s "functional equivalence theory" is one of Western translationtheory which has the greatest impact in wide range of our country. Meanwhile,Japan scholar Fumi Yanagichichi also proposes a "jewel box effect" theory. Inrecent years on the research of transaction,"domestication" and "foreignization"are the hot topics discussed on translation forum in translation circles. In thewestern translation circles, the United States translator Venuti is recognized as theinitiator of dissimilation theory. Before Venuti, Chinese scholars have everseriously discussed the problem of domestication and foreignization, Lu Xun isthe first person to propose this issue. With the development of human society,intercultural communication increasingly becomes an important and frequentsocial activity. This also means that the emergence of the new word and jargons.Vocabulary translation is the main part of the process of translation, thus effectiveat the lexical level is the precondition of successful translation. In the longpractice of translation,“domestication” and “foreignization” have been regardedas two major translation strategies. Both of them can realize effective translationin processing the texts which have bigger difference in the source language andtarget language cultures. In previous translation studies, domestication used to bethe dominant translation strategy, which advocates to translate withreader-oriented words and expressions, emphasizing its similarity with Japanese.However, as China and Japan have frequent exchanges between differentnationalities and close cultural exchanges,“Japanese loanwords” obviously exist.When translating into Chinese,“Japanese loanwords” are translated from theChinese new words, with Chinese coinage materials and methods. During the translation of “Japanese loanwords”,“foreignization” is the best choice. It turnsout that “foreignization” is an effective way to convey contents of Japanesespecial words, expounding Japanese culture, hence solving problems in thecross-cultural translation, and seeking for a new sense of language. So far, thetheoretical study of Japanese loanwords entering into Chinese in China is farfrom enough, and lack of systematical and statistical research. At the same time,study on the translation strategies in the process is ignored and many theories arestill unclear. Under the guidance of basic translation theory (more specific), thisarticle makes an in-depth study of the nature, source, effect of the Japaneseloanwords from the ancient Chinese period and the late period of Qing Dynasty tothe Republic of China as well as from the1970s to the present. This article triesto figure out the history of Chinese and Japanese and the process how Japaneseloanwords enter into Chinese. Based on “foreignization”, this article analyses theJapanese loanwords and its translation methods, hoping to provide help toSino-Japanese cross-cultural research.