An Explanatory Translation Model For Culture-loaded Words In Chinese-English Dictionaries Towards Cross-cultural Communication

Culture-loaded words refer to those words that contain specific cultural implication or associations.The cultural uniqueness of culture-loaded words results to the situation in which it is hard to find an equivalent word in another languages.Thus the semantic lacuna emerges,which lays difficulty in translation.As a carrier of abundant culture-loaded words and their translations,the Chinese-English dictionaries haven't received enough attention.This thesis has combed and concluded the definition and the classification standard of culture-loaded words from the perspective of translation studies.Then with the Lin Yutang's Chinese-English Dictionary of Modern Usage and A New Practical Chinese-English Dictionary by Liang Shiqiu as sources,adopting the method of induction,this thesis does statistical analysis and comparison of the culture-loaded words,shared by the two Chinese-English dictionaries and that fall into such a category that they reflect the most unique cultural images in China.The translation strategies,translation methods and translation techniques adopted by Lin Yutang and Liang Shiqiu have been concluded,and the linguistic forms have been generalized.By those means,an explanatory translation model for the translation of culture-loaded words into English has been tentatively put forward.There are six chapters in the thesis.Chapter one is an introduction of research background,research significances,research originalities,and describes the research questions,research object and research method.Chapter two is literature review and the definitions of corn terms.There are two main topics:previous studies on culture-loaded words and on the translation of culture-loaded words in Chinese-English dictionaries.Through the combing and conclusion of previous achievements in relevant areas,a practical research idea has been improved.Besides,chapter two provides the definitions of corn terms in this thesis.There are two sets of corn terms in the thesis,"culture-loaded words" and "translation strategy,translation method,translation technique".From the statistical analysis,the discussion of the result,to the tentative building of the explanatory translation model,the two sets of terms are indispensable.Yet various definitions have been provided in different studies from various perspectives,it is necessary to redefine the terms in an explicit way on the basis where the thesis stands.Chapter three,four and five belong to the main body of the thesis.Chapter three introduces the method of data collection.First,the cultural words(about 20000)of the two dictionaries were selected one by one,and then the cultural words(about 10000)shared by the two dictionaries were compared and selected.Finally,according to the focus of the study in this paper,the unique cultural words of Chinese culture(about 700)were selected as the corpus.Chapter four elaborates the translation strategies,methods and techniques in the translation of culture-loaded words adopted by Lin Yutang and Liang Shiqiu with examples.This paper makes a detailed description and comparative analysis of the distinct translation paths made up of translation strategies,translation methods and translation techniques in two Chinese English dictionaries.Translation strategy is a macro guiding principle.Translation method is a specific method to serve a certain translation strategy.Translation strategy is a specific and micro technique to achieve a certain translation method.In the selected over 700 culture-loaded words,the translation strategies,methods and techniques chosen by Lin Yutang and Liang Shiqiu are similar in general categories while different in specific application.Translation strategies are divided into three categories:domestication,foreignization,domestication plus foreignization.As far as translation methods are concerned,there are three categories of free translation,interpretation and conversion under domestication.There are transliteration,literal translation,and literal translation under foreignization.The combination of domestication plus foreignization means over one translations are provided and one belongs to domestication,and the other belongs to foreignizaiton.There are four translation skills:addition,omission,shift and conversion.The classification is explained in layers,supplemented by examples,and explained in detail.As for each dictionary,the translation system including translation strategies,methods and techniques has been explained in accordance to different categories step-by-step,and with the illustration of rich examples.Thus through horizontal comparison and contrast,the tendency in the translation of culture-loaded words into English by Lin Yutang and Liang Shiqiu has been analyzed respectively.Besides,through the comparison of the translation of some typical cultural-loaded words in other Chinese-English dictionaries,it has been proved that the translation system adopted by Lin Yutang and Liang Shiqiu is both domestication-oriented.Chapter five elaborates the linguistic forms reflected in the translation of Lin Yutang and Liang Shiqiu in the two dictionaries,many examples provided to explain.The translation system concluded in chapter four and the linguistic forms generalized here constitute the two sub-systems of the explanatory translation model.Principles abided by the translation approach have been discussed from the aspects of linguistics,translation theories and practicability,which also could be regarded as the theoretical support.Chapter six is the conclusion.The gist of the whole thesis has been concluded,and the opinions have been stated clearly.In the end,more realistic topics for future studies have been pointed out.