A Study On The Translation Of Time-expressions In Sanguo Yanyi Under Frame Semantics

Sanguo Yanyi is the first full-length novel with clear chapter divisions in ancient China.It is a great historical romance.The novel weaves the plot of three kingdoms? disputes in a chronological sequence and reveals the rise and decline of power blocks and empires in a turbulent historical period of more than one hundred years.As a historical novel,there are enormous time-expressions in Sanguo Yanyi which are rich in cultural connotations and calendrical methods.Some concepts like the heavenly stems and earthly branches are rather complicated and uneasy to comprehend,which causes much difficulty for the translation activities.In fact,ancient Chinese time-expressions generally exist in Chinese classics,especially in historical novels and annals.However,translation of ancient Chinese time-expressions has been for a long time neglected,and there is even no proper translation standard which could be referred to.This thesis takes the original work of Sanguo Yanyi and its two complete English versions by Taylor and Roberts as the analyzing material.Time-expressions collected from the book are classified into four categories,namely,year,month,day,and hour.Based on the comparison of the two English versions,the successfully translated time-expressions are pick out whose translation strategies are later summed up so as provide some practical translation suggestions for the expressions under discussion.The current research is conducted under the theoretical guidance of Frame semantics,which is an important branch of semantics in cognitive linguistics.It highlights the important role human?s knowledge and experience plays in the understanding of word meaning.In the light of Frame semantics,translation can be interpreted as a cognitive process in which the translator first interprets the original text and extracts the meaning based on his/her own knowledge,and then selects appropriate expressions in the target language which activate a frame that is identical or similar to the source language frame.Frame semantics provides a new view to study translation equivalence and to evaluate translation quality.It is found in the study that mistakes,though different in amount and degree,exist in both the two versions concerning the translation of time-expressions.Fundamentally,these mistakes are derived from cultural difference and the translator?s insufficient knowledge of the source language culture.To avoid making such mistakes,it is essential for translators to make careful survey on the cultural frames before translation.