A Comparative Study On China’s Cultural Image In The Oxford English Dictionary And The Chinese-english Dictionary

The present study is a comparative study on the cultural image of China constructed in domestic Chinese-English dictionaries and foreign English monolingual dictionaries,revolving around the spiritual cultur e of China.The national image of a country consists of two aspects,an auto-image and a hetero-image.Cultural image is an important dimension to national image,and Chinese spiritual culture is the core of Chinese culture.The construction of China’s cultural image has received many Chinese scholars’ attention,but existing researches on this topic are based on data collected from mass media,social media,and literary translations while dictionaries do play an important role in cultural communication.Therefore,drawing on cultural lexicography,which focuses on the culture of dictionary content and the culture of dictionary production,the author attempted to compare the auto-image and the hetero-image of Chinese culture built respectively in domestic and foreign dictionaries.The study is hoped to shed some light on the auto-image building of Chinese culture,especially through the compilation of bilingual dictionaries.To achieve the above purpose,the author collected 259 entries related to Chinese culture from the Oxford English Dictionary Online(OED)and focused on the82 entries associated with Chinese spiritual culture.26 entries associated with Chinese spiritual culture in the first volume of The Chinese-English Dictionary(CED)were also collected.The data were analyzed according to the structure of the dictionary,which consists of the macrostructure,the microstructure,and the mediostructure.The analysis of these cultural-associated entries yielded three major findings.Firstly,the lexicographical treatments of words associated with Chinese spiritual culture in the OED and the CED both have merits and drawbacks.Secondly,the hetero-image of Chinese spiritual culture demonstrated in the OED is a traditional,outdated,vague,and complex one.In contrast,the CED helps construct a relatively positive and comprehensive auto-image of Chinese spiritual culture.It constructs both a traditional image and a modern image of China.Thirdly,there are three main factors underlying the different constructions of Chinese cultural image: compilation subjectivity,the history of culture contact and language contact between China and the West,and dictionaries’ function of serving the cultural interests of their nations.The research is limited in that only two dictionaries were investigated,and the suggestions given on the compilation of bilingual dictionaries are too general,but it can still provide some theoretical and practical implications for further research.