The Loss of Meaning in Chinese to English Translation 中译英翻译过程中的意义流失.doc

毕 业 论 文年级层次 06级英语专升本脱产 学 号 200601092 姓 名 指导教师 北京语言大学继续教育学院 2008年11月1日毕 业 论 文 评 分 表姓名王海英班级06级英语专升本脱产a班论文题目（中英文）the loss of meaning in chinese to english translation中译英翻译过程中的意义流失导师评语论文成绩指导教师签名： 年 月 日 北京语言大学继续教育学院the loss of meaning in chinese to english translation student: 王海英 student no.: 200601092 instructor: 王琼 continuing education collegebeijing language and culture university the loss of meaning in chinese to english translation 中译英翻译过程中的意义流失abstract:the essence of translation is the equivalent replacement of the meaning between (sl) and (tl). according to professor liumiqings theory，language expresses five meanings, of different levels. which include the conceptive meaning, formal meaning, stylistic meaning, figurative meaning and cultural meaning. this paper will discuss the loss of meaning in chinese-english translation on the basis of .these meanings. keywords: translation，ssence of translation,，categories of meaning， loss of meaning 关键词： 翻译 翻译的本质 意义的分类 意义流失 outline:1. introduction2. the essence of translation and the category of meaning 2.1 the essence of translation2.2 the category of meanings3. the loss of meaning in chinese to english translation 3.1 the loss of conceptive meaning3.2 the loss of formal meaning3.3 the loss of stylistic meaning3.4 the loss of figurative meaning3.5 the loss of cultural meaning 4. conclusionthe loss of meaning in chinese to english translation1. introduction“language is essentially rooted in the reality of the cultureit can not be explained without constant reference to these broader contexts of verbal utterance.”(susan bassnett, 1995:25) now translation is becoming a more and more important international and intercultural activity, for it facilitates mutual understanding among different and conflicting racial, ethnic, religious and cultural groups, which is of special significance today.（ while a loss of issue coming that is the loss of meaning in process of translation at present. 不通） （due to one is indo-european, and other is sino-tibetan, it will give rise to many differences in mode of expression, meaning system and so on . 不通） according to professor liu miqings theory, the meaning of language could be divided into five types. the following paper will demonstrate that in some situations, if not all, a message in one language can not t be translated into another language without some loss of meaning. 不能说的太绝对，也有意义不损失的情况。 2. the essence of translation and the category of meaningstranslation was considered a kind practice activity of language. 不通during the process of translation, it is necessary to keep the original meaning in the source text, at the same time, (to express original ideas according to other the rules of language.不通) some translators or experts uses a concept, which they call the maxim of sufficient degree of precision: “professional translator go the level of precision needed.”(kussmaul, 1995: 95) 2.1 the essence of translation according to catford, translation is defined as follows: “the replacement of textual material in one language (sl) by equivalent textual material in another language (tl)” (catford, 1965: 20) this type of translation, which is word-for-word, is especially effective in translating phrases and proper names such as united nations, ministry of education, and so on. however, it is problematic at the level of sentence due to the differences in the syntax of source and target languages. translated texts as a product of this approach are not usually clear or communicative, and readers will get through the text slowly and uneasily. (other scholars have suggested other approaches and methods of translation. “reformulation” (newmark, 1988: 144), for example, has suggested communicative and semantic approaches to translation. 不通) by definition, communicative translation attempts to produce on its readers an effect as close as possible to that obtained on the readers of the source language. semantic translation, on the other hand, attempts to render, as closely as the semantic and syntactic structures of the tl allow, the exact contextual meaning of the original. semantic translation is accurate, but may not communicate well; whereas communicative translation communicates well, but may not be very precise. 2.2 the category of meanings meaning in a human language is a complex system. according to liu miqing, meanings of language can be divided into the follwing five types: conceptive meaning: conceptive meaning is the core and principal part of language information. on the semantics and pragmatics level, semantic content contains two kinds of meanings. i.e. what is expressed and how it is expressed. formal meaning: formal meaning refers to the forms of the language and word, or the character of the arrangement and structure of the chapter or the paragraph. formal meaning is most obviously manifested in many figures of speech, poetry, and antithetical couplet (duilian) and parallel sentences. stylistic meaning: stylistic meaning is the meaning expressed through the original style, including the character of literary style, manners of the uses of language of the text writer, and the style of writing. figurative meaning: figurative meaning refers to the rhetorical analogical meaning to analogical meaning. figurative analogy is means of coloring words meaning, making word different from plain word. figurativeness is a peculiar method by which language reflects the outside world and shows the thought, not using the abstract concept but the basic feature of concrete figure. so the concrete imagery or descriptiveness is the obvious feature of figurative language. the function of figurativeness is not to awaken readers rational thought but to provide an image full of figure, color and sound. thus, in translation translator should master the method and transmit the figurative meaning into the target language. cultural meaning: language is the product of national social culture and the carrier of the social cultural information. the whole national social culture is contained in this system. so without any question, it would lead to the loss of meaning neglecting the cultural meaning of language and the rich and colorful national cultural prismatic images. translation is a craft consisting in the attempt to replace a written message and or statement in one language by the same message and/or statement in another language. each exercise involves some kind of loss of meaning, due to a number of factors. it provokes a continuous tension, dialectic, an argument based on the claims of each language. the basic loss is on a continuum between over-translation (increased detail) and under-translation (increased generalization).3 the loss of meaning in chinese to english translation the meaning in one language sometimes cannot be completely conveyed by another language. certain words or phrases in a given language do not have one-to-one corresponding equivalents in another language. so in translation, the loss of meaning may occur in one or more of the above five kinds of meaning. the following will discuss the situation of the loss of meaning accordingly.3.1 the loss of conceptive meaningwhen translation chinese idiom, such as “初出茅庐 and “悬梁刺股”, in order to make the idioms understandable to western readers, translator first explains the basic meanings of the two idioms respectively, i.e. “初出茅庐” means at the beginning of ones career, and “悬梁刺股” means to be extremely hardworking in ones study; then tells the readers the story about the idioms. although translators make efforts to explain the relationship between the idioms and the stories, due to different cultural background, the western readers cannot associate the basic meaning of the idioms with the related stories. so some conceptive meanings lose.3.2 the loss of the formal meaningthe inevitable source loss is the fact that the two language, both in their basic character (langue) and their social varieties (parole), “in context have different lexical, grammatical and sound systems, and segment many physical objects and virtually all intellectual concepts differently.” (peter newmark, 2002: 15) what does this mean? you must explain it.chinese is tone language. like the vowel and consonant in english, the tone has the function to distinguish different meanings. for example , the chinese characters “捞”, “牢”, “老” ,and “涝”. although the four characters have the same sound, the have different meanings due to their different tones, which is a remarkable different meanings due to their different tone, tones of mandarin in chinese while in english there is no such a thing. in addition, chinese characters are basically monosyllabic. due to the four tones, that is the reason that some scholars regard chinese as the poetic language. in chinese, homonyms are popular, which is convenient to the chinese writer to create some literary works with distinguishing features. according to a statistics, the rate of chinese characters is 75%; the rate of chinese words is 5.38%. (马显彬，2005：3) therefore chinese people are very accustomed to use euphony either in speech or writing. for instance, in the mainland of china, people often jokingly nicknamed the man, who is afraid of the his wife, as “妻管严”(original meaning is rachitic, here is the euphony of“妻管严”means he is a hen-pecked man.) here is another example:“鲁侍萍：（大哭起来）哦，这真是一群强盗!(走到周萍面前,抽咽)你是萍, -凭-凭什么打我的儿子? lu shiping (breaking down) you are hooligans, too! (going across to zhou ping.) youre my -mighty free with your fists! what right have your to hit my son? ” (cao, 2003: 42)in the original text, the character “萍”(ping)is the name of the illegitimate son lu shiping and senior zhou. seeing her son, lu dahai terribly beaten by the hatchet man, head broken and bleeding, lu shiping cried out and safeguarded lu dahai. she stepped forward to zhou ping and wanted to recognize her son. but at the moment the sound “萍” broke out from her mouth, she found it was not a suitable time to do that and then she immediately changed her utterance into “凭什么打我的儿子” (what right do you have to hit my son). the character “萍”contains a both strong condemnation of the hatched man and severe of denounce of zhou family. “萍”and” 凭”homonyms, this way is a kind pun usage. in the english version, the translator uses “my” and “mighty” to replace “萍”and“凭”correspondingly, intending to create the effect of pun usage skillfully. although the version is well translated, the character “萍” in the original text have definite function of reference, while the word “my” does not have definite reference. so the western readers are impossible to understand the meaning of the pun. in the historical development of mandarin orthography, the earliest forms of characters consisted of pictographs and ideographs. they are basically visual representations, such as “山”symbolizes mountain, and “上”symbolizes up. the characters, such as “山”, are arguably pictographs that resemble pictures of that they symbolize. the characters, such as “上”, are in ideographs that symbolizes ideas (in this case, the concept of special location). these types of characters are in the form of simplified drawings of the objects or ideas denoted. thus, mandarin orthography has often been referred to as a logographic writing system.so some scholars use the rule of character structure to write poem, and some of them have completed a few excellent works. for instance:人曾为僧,人弗可以成佛,女卑为婢,女又何妨称奴。the man who has been a monk cannot become a buddha.the girl who is a bondmaid may be called a slave. (liu,1999: 56)in chinese, the character “人”(man ) and “曾”(ever) have their own meanings, respectively. and “人”and “曾” can be combined into a new character “僧”(monk) which have different meaning from “人” and “曾”. compared to first sentence, in the second sentence, “女”(woman) and “卑”(humble), “女”and “卑” can also be combined into new characters ”婢”(slave-girl) and ”奴” (slave). although the version conveys the conceptive meaning of the original text, you cannot have the fish and eat it, the western readers could not appreciate the form combination of the characters. so the formal meaning has still lost. 3.3 the loss of the stylistic meaning “the individual use of language of the text-writer and the translator do not coincide. everybody has lexical if not grammatical idiosyncrasies, and attaches private meanings to a few words. the translator normally writes in a style that comes naturally to him, desirably with a certain elegance and sensitivity unless the text precludes it. in chinese culture, “醋”(vinegar) is often used to mean “jealousy” because of the sour flavor, especially referring to the relationship between man and woman. the phrases such as “吃醋”,” 酸坛子” is of the same associative meaning. look at the following example: (赵辛眉)一肚子的酒,几乎全化成了酸醋. the wine in zhaoxinmeis stomach all trued to sour vinegar in his jealousy.(qian, 2003: 29)for the western readers, they would not associate “vinegar” with “jealousy”, due to the different culture background. although the translator had made his efforts to explain the meaning of “vinegar” by adding the phrase “in his jealousy”, the western readers could still not appreciate the bounded meaning and feel confused. the original works style is humorous and wise, but the version does not contain the original style and result in loss of stylistic meaning. 原来近日水月庵的智能私逃入志来找秦钟,不意被秦邦业知觉,将智能逐出,将秦钟打了一顿, 自己气的老病发了,三五日,便函呜呼哀哉了。 now, a few days previously, zhineng had stolen away from water moon convert and come to town to look for qin zhong in his home. she had been caught by his father, who drove her away and gave his son a beating. the old mans rage had brought on an attack of his chronic disorder, and within a few days he was dead. (cao, 2003: 370)in ancient chinese, “呜呼”means to be dead, and “哀哉”means sign. “呜呼哀哉” is commonly used in the elegiac address in the old time, but in the present day, its metaphoric meaning is dead. because there is no one-to-one equivalence in english, the translator has to translate it into “he was dead”, but “be dead” only reveals the condition or tells the truth, and it cannot show the attitude in the sentence. compared to the original text, not only the style of the classic elegance was lost, also the humorous tone disappeared.3.4 the loss of figurative meaning the loss of figurative meaning is the most common in the translation between chinese and english. because the figurative metaphor mostly derives from cultural history, customs, documents ballad and proverb rooted in one race. these metaphors are established by usage and accepted through common practice so metaphors are quiet characteristic in nationality. when translation the figurative words, translator often choose the core meaning of the words, i.e. the translator is forced to give up the figurative description and the figurative color, and intends to succeed in the transmit of the conceptive meaning. take the following sentence as an example:figurative word core meaningmeaning after translation揭竿而起起而造反to rise in rebellion接踵而来一个接一个的来come one after another 生米煮成了熟饭已无可挽回whats already done混口饭吃为生计而不得已地干某事to get an unpleasant job forones livelihood (liu,1999: 89) as one see in the examples, after the translation, the figurative color of the chinese idioms have lost, it is possible that the vividness, humorous style and the writers individual style are totally lost.3.5 the loss of cultural meaningas to the values of a culture situation, a culture creates and endows certain entitles with important cultural significance. a path may become for some tribal people a way of explaining the traditional way of life. as long as the people can remember, each generation has walked the same path. for the buddhist world, however, the wheel is the appropriate symbol to represent constant change that always reverts to its original position, a kind of rotational reincarnation. chinese characters are hieroglyphic and greatly influenced by the feature, chinese people tend to think in terms of images and they would use gorgeous vocabulary and metaphor so as to make their writing vivid. however, restricted by the highly formalized language, english speakers are used to thinking in terms of logic. the example given below is taken from a brochure that introduces the international dragon boat festival held in a certain city of china:中华大地，江河纵横；华夏文明， 源远流长轻快的龙舟如银河流星，瑰丽的彩船厂似海市蜃楼。两岸金碧辉煌的彩楼连成一片水晶宫，是仙境？是梦境？仰视彩鸽翩飞，低目漂灯流霓，焰火怒放，火树银花，灯舞回旋，千姿百态，气垫船腾起一江春潮，射击手点破满天彩球，跳伞健儿绽空中芭蕾，抢鸭勇士谱水上凯歌。啊！xx城是不夜城，龙舟会是群英会！the following is one version of this chinese text. the divine land of china has its rivers following across; the brilliant culture of china has its roots tracing back longthe light-some dragon-boats appeared on the river as though the star twinkle in the milk way. the richly decorated pleasure boats look like a scene of mirage. the splendid awnings in green and gold are chained into a palace of crystal. is this a fairyland or a mere dream? looking above, you can see the beautiful doves flying about. looking below, you can see the sailing lamps glittering crackling are the fireworks, which present you a picture of fiery trees and silver flowers. circling are the lantern-dancers, who present you with a variation of exquisit