I. Introducing the topic
1. Providing background information
Animals are friends of human beings, and languages of all nations have a great number of words denoting animals. People associate their feelings and emotions, even happenings and natural phenomena with various animals. Many animals have become a kind of symbolism in people’s mind, and this symbolism is reflected in language. For instance, sayings like “as busy as a bee” appear in many languages. However, these sayings do not necessarily coincide from one language to another due to different outlook of life and concept of beauty in different cultures.
2. Quoting an authority
Researchers have shown that the words people speak may be far less important than the body language used when delivering verbal message. They estimate that less than 10 percent of the whole message understood by an audience is the actual content. Some 30 percent is attributed to the pitch and tenor of a person’s voice and 60 percent to other forms of non-verbal communication from body language to facial expressions to hand gestures. (Charles Mitchell, 2000)
3. Starting with an anecdote
II. Focusing on the issue
The article tries to analyze the features of the subtitles of the movie Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon in terms of time-space constraints, informative function and cultural factors, and then puts forward corresponding strategies for translation, with concrete examples for illustration.
In this thesis, the author will discuss the differences of cultural connotations between Chinese and English animal words, and try to investigate the importance of the input of culture in vocabulary teaching.
III. Reviewing previous research
1. Defining the key terms
What is language? Different researchers have different concepts. Webster’s New World Dictionary offers several most frequently used scenes of the word “language”, namely: (1) human speech; (2) the ability to communicate by this means; (3) a system of vocal sounds and combination of such sounds to which meaning is attributed, used for the expression or communication of thought and feelings; (4) the written representation of such a system. These definitions give the conceptual meanings of language and its representative forms.
The most typically and generally acceptable definition is: Language is a system of arbitrary vocal symbols used for human communication. This definition is mostly generalized and it distinguishes human language from any other animals’ languages.
A famous Chinese linguist Zhao Shikai defined language from different angles:
(1) language is a social action and a carrier of information; (2) language is a system of structure; it contains phonetics, vocabulary and meaning, morphology and syntax; (3) language is a social phenomenon because it is an instrument of human communication
in a society; (4) language is a physiological phenomenon because it is connected with the organs of speech, the nervous system and muscular activities; (5) language is a psychological phenomenon because it is closely related to man’s psychological activities; (6) language is also a physical phenomenon owing to the propagation of speech sounds. These definitions are comparatively complete and all-around. It defines language from different angles like linguistics, sociology, psychology, physics, etc.
On the basis of the above-mentioned points, language may be defined as follows: language is a system of symbols based on physiology, psychology and physics. It is a specific social action and a carrier of information used for human communication in a society.
2. Providing theoretical background
The relationship between language and culture is not just that between a part and a whole. It is much more complex than that. Language is the carrier and container of culture; language, as a mirror of culture, is strongly influenced and shaped by culture; language and culture is closely related, each influencing and shaping the other. As E. Sapir, an American linguist, points out that a language can’t exist in a “cultural vacuum”, nor can it exist in a vacuum of practices and beliefs inherited from the society. As the carrier of culture, every language has its own system and structure. And every nation has its own living habits, thinking way, language psychology, behavior criterion, sense of worth, and culture tradition.
3. Evaluating related research
Euphemism has been used for a long time. It is also widely studied by Chinese and foreign scholars with great interest. In 1932, in a relatively long time in China, advocated by Chen Wangdao in his book An Introduction to Rhetoric, euphemism was studied as a means of rhetorical devices. In 1983, Chen Yuan discussed euphemism in his book Sociolinguistics in great details. From then on, more and more Chinese scholars who study foreign languages began to carry out some researches on this subject and published a large number of papers which made the study of euphemism step into a new stage. In recent years, Liu Chunbao has compiled A Dictionary of English Euphemisms, and it is regarded as an important work on euphemism. In English-speaking countries, American linguist Menken’s The American Language and British linguist Hugh Rawson’s A Dictionary of Euphemisms and Other Doubletalk are both extraordinary works on euphemism.
However, it is not difficult to find that most of these works deal with euphemism in a single language. They either treat euphemism as a rhetorical device or discuss the nature of euphemism. Few works or papers are devoted to the comparison of euphemism between two languages and get the corresponding translation strategies. In other words, most of the researches have been done in the linguistic field. As far as the author of this thesis is concerned, the discussion on the translation of euphemism is of great significance in cross-cultural communication. It will help the readers to overcome some barriers in understanding or translating euphemism.
4. Formulating the research design
This thesis attempts to offer some strategies for the translation of euphemism in
English-Chinese and Chinese-English translation on the basis of Chen Hongwei and Li Yadan’s translation criterion—“similarity in function and correspondence in meaning”. Starting with the discussion on translation and culture, the thesis compares English and Chinese taboo words, and provides specific euphemisms that substitute taboo words with some translation strategies which may be helpful to the English learners and translators.
Sample
With the globalization of economy and especially with its accession to the WTO, China is taking an increasingly active part in world business activities. It is therefore necessary and inevitable for domestic enterprises to enter into business contracts with overseas companies or company groups. Considering the importance of a contract, it is very essential to make sure that a contract is correctly made and understood by the contracting parties. This is especially so for an international business contract, where two or more different languages are usually involved.
An international business contract is often characterized by a rigid format, a well thought-out content, a complicated structure, and formal language. In order to make the terms clear and the rights and obligations of the two parties specified and controversial interpretations avoided, effective language use is of vital importance. It is often the case that, among other things, a large number of subordinate clauses are used towards such an objective.
Sometimes several clauses are used to modify one verb, or one clause will contain another. With regard to the place where a subordinate clause is put, there can be a great difference between English and Chinese. It has thus become a key problem of how to render a subordinate clause, an adverbial clause in particular, from the source language into the target language in the translation of international business contracts. So in what follows, the author proposes to take a relatively detailed look at this problem, basing on relevant translation theories and standards.