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- Title
Translating news from English to Chinese: Complimentary and derogatory language usage.
- Authors
Sorby, Stella
- Abstract
For decades there have been crucial misunderstandings between the English-speaking world and the Chinese in which translation has played a prominent part. News translation is a significant source of misunderstanding which cannot be ignored. Through gathering, analysing and evaluating some cases of Chinese news translations from various news resources such as newspapers, Internet and TV, this paper aims to bring the issue of the significance of the usage of complimentary and derogatory words in the Chinese language to the forefront and investigates the nature and possible effect of the translation gain and loss involving the positive and negative associations of selected words and phrases in the English to Chinese news translation. It attempts to find out the likely causes affecting the news translators, thereby raising awareness of the different characteristics of the two languages in terms of complimentary and derogatory word usages vs. central meanings with a positive or negative connotation depending on their context. A small-scale experiment illustrates that this characteristic of the Chinese language has contributed to the Chinese translators' conscious or subconscious tendencies towards the potential for translation loss in their news translations, which could lead to misunderstandings by the readers.
- Subjects
ENGLISH-speaking countries; CHINESE people; MISCOMMUNICATION; ENGLISH language -- Translating into Chinese; REPORTERS &; reporting; VOCABULARY
- Publication
Babel: International Journal of Translation / Revue Internationale de la Traduction / Revista Internacional de Traducción, 2008, Vol 54, Issue 1, p19
- ISSN
0521-9744
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1075/babel.54.1.03sor