A Study on Chinglish and Possible Solution to It.doc

论汉英翻译中的中式英语问题及其改进措施a study on chinglish and possible solution to itabstract: with the reform and opening-up of china and economic globalization, translation is playing a more and more significant role. as an important way to push forward communication, it greatly promotes the exchange between different nations in aspects of politics, culture and economy. at present, english that has developed as a worldwide language has become our main tool to fulfill international communication, and china has millions of people involved in c-e translation activities, however, unfortunately, most of them are adopting a special kind of language called “chinglish”, which cannot be understood or accepted by english natives. the translators just rigidly stick to original words, and their translations turn out to be obscure and not consistent with english habits or rules but with chinese characteristics. consequently, chinglish seriously affects the translation quality, our communication with the world and the international status of our country. this thesis, which is an attempt to study chinglish in chinese-english translation, analyzes main forms and causes of chinglish and also ways how to reduce or avoid it, with a view to bringing translation nearer to a higher standard, i.e., “faithfulness, smoothness and elegance”. key words: translation ；chinese-english translation；chinglish摘要：随着我国改革开放和全球经济一体化，翻译在其中正扮演着越来越重要的角色。翻译作为推动跨语言，跨文化交际活动的重要手段，它促进了我国同世界各个国家间的政治，经济，文化方面的相互学习，交流和借鉴。当前，英语已发展成为我们进行国际交流的世界性语言，中国有成千上万人投身于与英语翻译有关的工作，然而遗憾的是，由于我们大多数人所使用的英语都会不同程度地受到汉语的影响，以此产生了一种被戏称为“中式英语”的特殊语言现象。“中式英语”不能为英语国家的读者理解或接受，译者过于拘泥于原文，因此，其翻译生硬晦涩，使我们本要表达的意思被误解和曲解，由此严重阻碍了跨文化交流的效果。中式英语，严重地影响了翻译质量、我国的对外交流以及中国在国际中的地位。本论文尝试对中式英语进行系统分析，找出中式英语主要的表现形式以及造成此类现象的主要原因，从而对如何避免“中式英语”提出科学而又可行的解决办法，使译文更贴近“信、达，雅”的翻译标准。关键词：翻译；汉英翻译；中式英语contentsi. introduction1ii. definition of chinglish.2iii. manifestations of chinglish .3a. incorrect location of meaning.3 1. literal translation3 2. unnecessary words.33. incorrect collocation.44. incorrect logic.5b. incorrect word order.5c. lacking of naturalization.6 1. improper subjects.7 2. inaccurate understanding of words.7iv. main causes of chinglish.7a. the linguistic interference of ones mother tongue.8b. the cultural discrepancies.9c. the differences of thinking patterns.10 1. difference of emphasis on individual or general.10 2difference of emphasis on subject or object.11 3difference of thinking angles.11 4difference of emphasis on process or result.11 5difference of orders of direction and time.12v. possible solutions to the problems.12a. understanding the source text thoroughly .12b. knowing more about english thought patterns.13c. intercultural awareness in translation.13d. doing more practice13vi. conclusion.14works cited.15i. introductionwith chinas great development and increasingly frequent contacts in terms of global economy and culture, more and more qualified translators and interpreters are needed to advance the course of translation between chinese and english. translation errors have been a stubborn obstruction to those who devoted their time and energy into this field, especially, chinglish. chinglish, created by chinese people who are not good at english, is one of the major problems that influence the translation effect. it has already existed for a long time since chinese began to study and use english. scholars at home and abroad have been devoting themselves to studying chinglish for years. in the early 1980s, some foreign experts pointed out that some phrases or structures in some published chinese magazines and newspapers did not conform to idiomatic english actually. li wenzhong distinguished chinglish from china english. he thought that chinglish, which produced by the translators who are interfered by chinese thought pattern and culture, is not in conformity with english usage and culture, while china english used to express things peculiar to china belongs to normative english and can be accepted by the people of english-speaking countries. on the basis of interlanguage, lin qiong has put forward that both chinglish and china english were interlanguage variations produced by chinese and affected by chinese culture, and they were inevitable. zhuang yichuan stated that there were two reasons of chinglish. one is misunderstanding of the original, and the other was being not familiar with english characteristics and adopting collocations and structures. joan pinkham, an american professional translator, systematically classified chinglish manifestations and corrected them with specific analysis. and a well-known translator, peter newmark, considered that, “he who writes or speaks in a foreign language will be caught out every time, not by grammar, which is probably suspiciously better than an educated native, not by his vocabulary, which may well be wider, but by his unacceptable or improper collocations. (newmark 46)” nowadays, chinglish becomes a hot word in our english-learning as a big progress is making in the field of english-teaching. whats more, scholars in the field of translation pay more attention to chinglish than before. because chinglish is not idiomatic english, reflects the influence of chinese language and damages the communication, in order to reduce or avoid it and make a translation come nearer to a higher standard, namely, faithfulness, smoothness and elegance, it is necessary for the translators to make a theoretical study of the nature and sources of chinglish. seen in historical retrospect, a systematic study of chinglish has never been in existence with respect to the reasons that cause it. this does not mean, of course, that people pay no attention to it. the studies of chinglish are scattered in books or articles in the field of english teaching and learning, especially at the present time with an unprecedented need of using english for international communication and cooperation. it is under such circumstances that this thesis attempts to list the most common manifestations of chinglish and to find the basic causes of them. and then try to give possible solutions to chinglish.ii. definition of chinglishchinglish is defined comprehensively by joan pinkham who is an american language expert in her book the translators guide to chinglish: “chinglish, of course, is that misshapen, hybrid language that is neither english nor chinese but that might be described as english with chinese characteristics”. it does not conform to standard english and cannot be understood or accepted by english native speakers, so it is not playing a good role in communicating with english people.in the strict sense, chinglish is the interlanguage of chinese learners between chinese and english. proposed by s. pit corder and larry selinker, the concept of interlanguage was established as learners independent system of the second language which is neither the native language nor the second language, but a continuum or approximation from his native language to the target language (steiner 28). the characteristics of interlanguage are cited:(1)it is dynamic, and full of errors, and is in the process of constant change towards a standard target language system. (2)the learners competence is transitional. it is subject to constant revision, passes through a number of stages, and forms the “interlanguage continuum”.another feature is fossilization which is defined as a process occurring from time to time in which incorrect linguistic features become a permanent part of the way a person speaks or writes a language. being chinese, we generally cannot reach the same level of competence as english natives. our “final state” grammar is not standard english grammar. thus, certain rules and items “fossilize”. typical errors are “he have” and “she go to school yesterday”, etc. according to the definitions of chinglish and interlanguage and the characteristics of interlanguage, a conclusion can be drawn that chinglish is an interlanguage of chinese learners of english, and is neither chinese nor english but stands between them.iii. manifestations of chinglishtranslation is a well-structured transformation of both source language and target language. of course, it applies to c-e translation. chinese and english are of fundamental difference, when one translates chinese into english, he or she should follow the english rules rather than the chinese one. after all, not all vocabulary has an equivalent in other language. as for the sentence structure, it is not the same as well. whats more, chinese and english indicate different connotation because of the culture. its difficult to make a compromise in the translation. therefore, as a matter of fact, chinglish easily occurs. the manifestation includes: incorrect location of meaning, incorrect word order and lacking of naturalization. i will analysis each of them with a large amount of examples. a. incorrect location of meaningincorrect location of meaning usually results from literal translation and unnecessary words. 1. literal translationthis kind of error is the most serious one. it is not consistent with english rules or habits and cannot be understood by english native speakers. for example: red lights and green wine(灯红酒绿); big branches and large leaves(粗枝大叶); color wolf(色狼), etc. these translations are translated from chinese literally and rigidly. we can say that their masters know very little about english. 2. unnecessary wordsa classic statement in the famous book of william strunk, jr. and e. b. white is that, “vigorous writing is concise. a sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentence”. it follows that any words which perform no function in the sentencethat is, which add nothing to the meaningshould be edited out (wilss 32). however, almost every text translated from chinese into english contains unnecessary words. namely, unnecessary words appear in a large number of phrases and sentences. unnecessary words are the hallmark of chinglish. lets see the following examples. all following examples have two versions; a-version is chinglish while b-version is the idiomatic one.1) 加快经济改革的步伐a:to accelerate the pace of economic reformb: to accelerate economic reform“to accelerate” means to increase the pace of something, so “the pace of” is repeated in meaning and should be deleted.2) 确保中美两国之间紧密的合作关系a:to ensure a relationship of close cooperation between china and americab: to ensure close cooperation between china and americaas everybody knows, cooperation is a kind of relationship, so “relationship” is unnecessary.3） 我们必须对居住条件作出改善。we must make an improvement in the living conditions. the verb “make” is a weak, colorless, all-purpose word having no specific meaning of its own, while the real action is expressed in the noun “improvement”. since the verb is contributing nothing to the sense, it can be eliminated: “we must improve the living conditions.” a similar example: 4) 这个玩具让我想起了我的童年。a:this toy made me remember my childhood.b: this toy reminded me of my childhood.5) 现在几点钟了?a:what time is it now?b: what time is it, please?in a-version, “now” is unnecessary, because it is impossible to ask “what time was it yesterday?” or “what time is it tomorrow?” “now” is also unnecessary in this sentence: “he is playing basketball now.”, for “is playing” already shows the tense is present one.6) 这些制度被彻底废除了。 a:these systems have been abolished totally. b: these systems have been abolished. “abolish” already contains the idea of “totally, for you cannot abolish something partially. the same is true of such expression as “thoroughly eliminate” and “completely conquer”, etc.3. incorrect collocationdue to the influnce of literal meaning, chinglish tend to occur not in grammar but relating to collocation. therefore, translators could avoid chinglish only after them acquired both chinese and english, familiared the set collocations and idiomatic expressin habits of them. we take the word “假” in chinese as an example.假花 artificial flower假牙 false tooth假唱 lip-synch假钞 counterfeit money假酒 adulterated wine假新闻 pseudo-eventanother example like this is “大”, when we talk about rain, we can use the word “heavy”, but when we moderfy wind, it will be “ strong wind” and “大雾” is “ thick fog”.4. incorrect logicpeter newmark points out in his approach to translation: all translation remains a craft requiring a trained skill, continually renewed linguistic and non-linguistic knowledge and a deal of flair and imagination, as well as intelligence and above all common sense (newmark 53).the “common sense” here reveals the importance of logical reasoning in translation. in other words, logical analysis can ensure ones correct understanding of the logical. take the phrase “in time” as an example. we all know the meaning of the phrase is but we can not analyze the meaning of the whole sentence by using the usual meaning of “in time” as “及时” when we look at the following sentence:i know you think i am thinking nonsense, but in time you will realize that i was right.in this sentence, “in time” means “sooner or later”b. incorrect word orderwhen we talk about sentence structure, we may know that both chinese and english have a pattern as “subject + verb + object”, however, the words order in chinese is more flexible. as we all know, chinese and english belong to different language families and have different language structures. an important respect is that the word orders of the two languages are not the same. the english sentences with incorrect word order may become chinglish. the following are some examples. 1) 飞机从北京起飞。a:the plane from beijing take off.b: the plane takes off from beijing.2) 我每天早上七点起床。a:i every morning seven oclock get up. b: i get up at seven oclock every morning.obviously, a-versions are chinglish with wrong word orders that are the same with the originals. on the one hand, the structure of chinese is: subject + adverbial + verb + object, but the english one is subject + verb+ object + adverbial. on the other hand, as discussed in chapter one, chinese people emphasize on the process, and westerners pay more attention to the result. as a result, western people often put the result or the more important information before the process or the less important information. here is another example:3) 学生们正在用古代的乐器弹奏老师指定的曲子。a:the students are playing tunes appointed by their teacher, using antique instruments.b: the students using antique instruments are playing tunes appointed by their teacher. “using antique instruments” is plainly meant to modify “students”, but in a-version its placement makes it modify the immediately preceding “teacher”. in b-version, the participle “using” is attached to the right noun “students”.in addition, orders of persons are often put at wrong places by chinese people. for instance:4) 我今晚将和陈先生、黄太太一起用餐。a:i, mr. chen and mrs. huang are going to have dinner together this evening.b: mr. chen, mrs. huang and i are going to have dinner together this evening.generally speaking, “i” is put after other people in english. nevertheless, when responsibility or mistake is to be taken or admitted, “i” must be placed before others, such as, “i and wang ming are responsible for it.” c. lacking of naturalizationnaturalization, means bring the foreign culture closer to the reader in the target culture, making the text recognizable and familiar (cheng 127). nida can be said to be a representative figure of the school. according to him, what is important in translation is “readers response”. thus to naturalize the translation works is another thing should be taken into consideration when one translates something. the following factors lead to unnatural english sentences in translation:1. improper subjectsenglish sentences which innanimate can be very vivid and expressive. failure to observe this linguistic phenomenon often leads to tasteless, monotonous and chinglish (cheng 174). the following pairs of sentences illustrate this point: 1) a* she was very miserable and her heart broke.misery tore her into pieces.2) b* she was so jealous that she become desperate. jealousy drove her to despair.2. inaccurate understanding of words an english word and its correspondent chinese term dont always share the same semantic register. they may match in some context but not in theirs. see the following sentences:1) a* i feel very painful in my right hand.i feel great pain in my right hand.2) b* when i reached into my wallet for my money, i found it invisible. when i reached into my wallet for my money, i found it missing/ gone.iv. main causes of chinglishtranslation is a kind of link or bridge for people with different languages to communicate with each other; it is a process of translating between the original and target languages. but why will chinglish sometime