Error Analysis of the Bilingual Packages from the Perspective of Equivalence Principle.doc

error analysis of the bilingual packages from the perspective of equivalence principlechapter 1introductionnowadays, it is very easy for us chinese people to see english versions of the words on the packages of chinese products. those that are easy to read, understand and memorize can always motivate customers purchasing desire and bring companies a great success and fortune from what they are endeavoring to sell.however, a large number of errors can be detected on these bilingual packages which may mislead the foreigners. erros on the usage of words, sentence structures and semantics have made the foreigners puzzled. “dont eat the product with a swelling or leaking bag!”, which shhould be expressed as “dont eat the vegetable if the bag is broken or swelling! (涨袋、漏气请勿食用).” translation on the package is different from other kind of translation and it is not literal translation at all. on some packages, pinyin is adopted to take the place of english words. this can not be accepted by the foreigners, because pinyin is not made according to the international phonetic symbol in spite of being made up of letters, for example, xing qiu and zhong yi can not be recognized by foreigners, so they had better be translated as “globe” and “satisfaction” as the name of products. simple literal translation is not proper, either. because of different cultures, some words daily used in chinese are not elegant in english and the foreigners may think that the chinese people are so “vulgar”. for example, a kind of well-known shoe polish we chinese people are familiar with, called “jin ji”, was once translated into “golden cock” which aroused the foreigners criticism because “cock” has some unpleasant meaning in english. fortunately, now a better translation has been made: golden rooster. proper and correct translation on the packages will attract the consumers and therefore bring fortune to the company. so, translating in a standard way is of great importance. in this research, some bilingual packages are collected from supermarkets. errors on these packages are analyzed and sorted into different categories, together with those collected from books and articles. the aim of this research is to appeal to professional scholars to work on the standardization of bilingual packages in china. flexibility is necessary in translation, but standardization of translation is vital in bilingual packages. for example, “cheng fen (成分)” has been translated into “ingredient” , “component” and “composition”. in standardized translation, a unique word should be adopted to avoid misunderstanding.proper and beautiful translation is of great difficulty. in recent years, equivalence theory has been introduced in translation. this thesis will discuss the translation of chinese packages into english in terms of vocabulary, sentence structure, semantics, and culture from the perspective of equivalence principle. chapter 2theoritical review2.1 theoritical review on translation2.1.1 standards of translationtranslation consists in reproducing in the receptor language the closest natural equivalent of the source-language message, first in terms of meaning and secondly in terms of style (nida & taber, 1982, p.12). traditional translation pays much attention to expressing the source language faithfully, both in china and in western countries. to some degree, the standards of translation are also called the principles of translation (liao, 2006). gu (2005) notices three principles of translation: the first thing is to give a just representation of the sense of the original; the second thing is to convey into his version, as much as possible, in a consistency with the genius of the language which he writes the authors spirit and manner; the third thing and the last thing is, to take care, the version have at least, so far the quality of an original performance, as to appear natural and easy. these three principles are similar to the principle of faithfulness, expressiveness and elegance, which are challenged by many scholars but are accepted by most chinese people in those many years.another standard of translation is the equivalence principle. liao (2006) claims that to some extent, equivalence principle is the nature of translation . “equivalence”, in oxford advanced learners english-chinese dictionary, is defined as the noun form of “equivalent”, which means “equal in value, amount, meaning, importance, etc.”. but when the equivalence principle is considered together with translation, it becomes an abstract concept and actually refers to the equivalence relationship between the source text and the target text. anyhow, equivalence can be regarded as the ideal goal of translation, which is not easy to get, but the situation will turn better as long as the translator achieves it.2.1.2 skills of translationwords on the packages play a significant role in competing with other products and they are used to attract the consumers. those words that are easy to understand and memorize can always stimulate the customers purchasing desire and bring companies a great success and fortune from what they sell , therefore, we can see that making excellent translation is of great importance and urgency. there are some skills to make it better. firstly, novelty helps the products to draw the attention of the consumers. as we all know that nobody is interested in dul and boring words appearing on the packages. novel ideas can always fascinate people to see what on earth the products are about. secondly, the knowledge of the translator determines the quality of the target text. perfect, at least correct, translation can explain the products well and make the consumers know them better in order to promote the growth of selling goods. it is believed that nobody is interested in the products about which he knows noting. thirdly, getting familiar with the other nations culture can make the translation better than expected. as was discussed above, many mistakes have been made because of the lack of awareness of the culture differences, such as “dragon” is thought by us chinese people as power, nobility and good luck, while it is not considered as a good animal in western countries because they take dragon as an evil monster that will bring disaster. so, under this circumstance, what will happen if we chinese translate our “long” into “dragon” directly into english. nobody is supposed to feel like buying “an evil monster”. there are some other examples of this kind which can be seen frequently in our daily life, for example, magpie. a lucky bird in china but a babbler in english.fourthly, modulation in semantics between abstract and concrete, part and whole, movement and stillness and other modulation are necessary. meanwhile, shifts of the forms and grammars, such as shifts between nouns and verbs, between adjectives and adverbs, are important in making the bilingual packages simple, attractive and tuny. 2.1.3 methods of translationthere are three main kinds of translation methods which contain six parts: literal and free translation, alienation and adaptation, semantic and communicative translation.liu (2006) claims that according to literal translation, the source language grammatical constructions are converted to their nearest target language equivalents, but the words are translated singly by their most common meanings out of context. while free translation reproduces the matter without the manner, or the content without the form of the original. literal translation strives to reproduce both the ideological content and the style of the original works and retains as much as possible the figures of speech. free translation is an alternative approach which is used mainly to convey the meaning and spirit of the original without trying to reproduce its sentence patterns of figures of speech.liu (2006) proposes that alienation attempts to reproduce the precise contextual meaning of the original by preserving the way of source language expression. adaptation reproduces the precise contextual meaning of the original by using the idiomatic way of target language expression. for example, if “to kill two birds with one stone” is translated as “yi shi er niao”, alienation is used, however, if it is translated as “yi jian shuang diao”、“yi ju liang de”，adaptation is used.as to semantic translation and communicative translation, liu (2006) suggests that the former attempts to render, as closely as the semantic and syntactic structures of the second language allow, the exact contextual meaning of the original, while the latter attempts to produce on its readers an effect as close as possible to that obtained on the readers of the original. in general, a semantic translation is written at the authors linguistic level, a communicative at the readerships.2.2 theoritical review on the equivalence principle2.2.1 definition of the equivalence principleequivalence has been a central notion in discussions of translation across the ages, whether these discussions are theoretical or practical. in fact, it has been so central that translation itself is defined in terms of equivalence. nida (1964) says that the notion of equivalence in translation is what offers the closest natural equivalent to the source language message in both meaning and style.equivalence is of great importance because it is used in defining translation itself. this also makes it problematic because it is circular - translation is defined in terms of equivalence and equivalence is at the same time used for assessing and describing actual translation acts. equivalence is central in the study of translation, for it is connected to another important theoretical notions in translation studies. a conclusion can be drawn that equivalence makes other notions possible. “definitions of equivalence can similarly be either normative (postulating a specific relation to be achieved) or descriptive (discovering a relation of equivalence/correspondence between source and target elements)” (yang, 2004).to some extent, yang (2004) claims that the idea of a unit of translation is an assumption of equivalence. discussions of a unit of translation centre on what units are to be considered equivalent (words, clauses, etc.) or what units translators work with in real life in order to produce an “equivalent” version of the source text. 2.2.2 skills of equivalent translationone of the essential elements in equivalence principle is the receptor. the impact on the receptor is highlighted so that the response of the receptor is essentially like that of the original receptor (newmark, 2001). receptor is the destination of the information transfer, which can not be achieved without the object of the action. newmarks “dynamic equivalence” has similar meaning. the same information is required to make almost the same effect with two different languages. thus, some skills of equivalence principle relative to three notions can be good examples to express equivalence principle.the first one is the notion of the receptor. equivalence principle emphasizes the receptor but not the information sender. according to equivalence principle, translation is achieved only when the target text is accepted by the readers. equivalence principle required the translator to take the receptor into account and understand what kind of person he or she is. the second notion is effect. effect can be understood as the target texts impact on the receptor and the receptors response to the target text, which can be understood clearly. these two aspects exist together, which makes the target text familiar to the readers and helps the products to be remembered by people. the third is the notion of equivalence. equivalence in translation, to some degree, is a comprehensive relationship, which is not just the mechanical equivalence, but “natural” equivalence that requires equivalence not only in language but also in culture, customs and anything else.2.2.3 methods of equivalent translationseveral methods can be adopted in translation from the perspective of the equivalence principle: metaphrase, transliteration, combination of metaphrase and transliteration, explanation, and restructuring.metaphrase is the most common method in translation of the package. for example, “葵花” is put into sunflower, the corresponding word of the source language; “月季”, a kind of flower we chinese people are familiar with, is expressed as china rose; xiong mao as panda; zuan shi as diamond; you ya de ( ) as elegant; mei wei de as delicious, gan lan you as olive oil and so on. there are so many examples of this kind. however, metaphrase that we are discussing about is not just literal translation at all for there are either slight or great cultural differences in different countries.another method is transliteration, which is often seen on the package of the products. on the package of the authors cup, 茶花(cha hua), tha brand of the cup, is just put into the chinese pin yin, which is acceptable. however, transliteration only appear in the translation of the brand, but not in the translation of the instructions.still another method is the combination of the transliteration and mataphrase. as the name suggests, two kinds of methods are considered and used together. this method requires the target text not only to express the meaning of the original text, but also to be similar to the chinese pronunciation. it asks the translator for solid knowledge of the two languages and artistic imagination. differences between the two languages make it very difficult.explanation is used when there is no proper word to express the meaning of the original text. it is known that some words of the original language have no corresponding words in the target language, such as “qi gong”, “shang huo”, “qi pao” and so on. under this circumstance, proper explanation is very necessary to make the translation better and readable.restructuring is adopted when long sentences exist. it is known that instructions are necessary for the packages and most of the instructions are made up of a few long sentences. due to the differences between chinese and english, ways to express the same meanings vary. so, restructuring can make the expressions more clear.chapter 3error analysis of the bilingual packages3.1 lexical analysisboth chinese and english have their vocabulary. there are some words existing both in chinese and english with the same meaning, such as, water, pen, table and so on. however, some words have slight differences that can not be neglected if the translator is not careful enough or do not have solid background knowledge. that is why mistakes appear in translation.3.1.1 spellingspelling correctly is basic to translation because omission or addition of even one letter will change the meaning. however, mistakes for spelling wrongly really exist because of either the translators carelessness or wrong printing.a lot of examples exist on bilingual packages. “u-shape pilloe”, in chinese “u型枕” should be “u-shape pillow”. such an error on one letter may puzzle the potential consumers and thus result in failure in selling the product.on the package of a kind of food, a sentence goes like this: take it soon after unseeling, which should be corrected as: take it soon after unsealing.it is known that ice cream should be put in fridge in order to be kept longer. however, there is a sentence on the package of a kind of ice cream: better taste when cooked. the expression looks really funny because “cooked” here should be “cooled”.3.1.2 part of speechwords that have the same root can not be used identically. grammar requires adjectives to modify nouns, adverbs to modify verbs and adjectives. advertisements on the packages are often used on the bilingual packages to express the advantages of the products, however, misuse of parts of speech frequently appear. on the package of summer quilt are “温暖、舒适、健康、耐用” to explain the advantages of the products，but when they are put into english, they are written in “warm, comfortable, health, perdurable”. apparently, an adjective “healthy” should be used here instead of the noun form “health”.on the package of guang le food, “保持城市清洁!” is translated into “keep city cleanly!”. obviously, “cleanly” in the sentence should be changed into “clean”.the package of a preserved fruit includes an instruction, which goes like this: do not eat it if the bag is swelling or leak. “leak” can be used as both a verb and a noun except an adjective. “leaking” should be used instead of “leak”.3.1.3 splittingsplitting is one method of translation, however, it does not mean that all the phrases on the bilingual packages can be split into single words. splitting without getting the exact idea will make the target text unable to be understood clearly and properly. in our daily life, most chinese names of the products have a corresponding word in english. however, the translators, especially the software ones, often make mistakes because they just try to split the chinese words.on the package of flour, “面粉” is translated into “face powder”. can you imagine what a foreign consumer will use the product for? another example on the same package lies in the address of production. “虎门(hu men)”, a city in china, is expressed as “tiger door”. it is not necessary to translate a city in this way, in fact, pin yin can help to achieve the goal. “棉花糖”, on the package of a marshmallow is put into “cotton candy”, which foreigners can not understand what it is. 3.1.4 choice of wordschoosing proper and exact words can express the products clearly and accurately, otherwise, the translation will make the foreigners puzzled. even synonyms and homonyms can not been used arbitrarily for there are still slight differ