中国谚语的英文翻译OnEnglishTranslaionofChineseProverbs_开题报告

Research Background

  Defining a "proverb" is a difficult task. Proverb scholars often quote Archer Taylor’s classic "The definition of a proverb is too difficult to repay the undertaking... An incommunicable quality tells us this sentence is proverbial and that one is not. Hence no definition will enable us to identify positively a sentence as proverbial". Another common definition is from Lord John Russell (c. 1850) "A proverb is the wit of one, and the wisdom of many". ----According to Wikipedia.

The proverb is widely used in all human languages. It is the essence of their language, is the summarization of both production and life experiences, and is the crystallization of human wisdom.

Chinese proverbs is an important part of traditional culture, also it is a special part of the Chinese language. A Chinese proverb has its particular cultural background, is an artistic statement with the form of brief, to the point, and rich in content.

Research Object

Different proverbs have different meanings in different cultural backgrounds, even the same proverb, meaning will be quite different when cultural background changes, even some proverbs only reflects its real meaning in a specific cultural background. Due to the differences of living environment, life style, customs, religious beliefs, sometimes when a Chinese proverb translated into English, it can have a completely different expression, which requires the translation skills of Chinese proverbs.

Translation is a kind of special language communication skill, how to translate Chinese proverb into English correctly, how to let the reader totally understanding it, is depends on the language features and cultural background.

Therefore, the purpose of this study is to make a better understanding on English translation of Chinese proverbs, and to help the reader to consider the enlightenment function of proverbs more rational when use it.

2.  Literature Review

After the reform and opening up, the proverb research has entered a new period, the most representative book is "the book of proverbs", co-authored by Wu Zhankun and Ma Guofan. In this book, character, structure and contents of proverbs are discussed in details. A study from book of "proverb", which authored by Wen Duanzheng, is not only a summary of the previous studies, but also a useful application of the meaning of proverbs. In book of "Chinese idioms learning", which authored by Sun Weizhang, he discussed the speech structure, semantic structure and syntactic structure of proverbs from a system view. In this period, the depth and width of proverbs research has made great progress, the semantic research began to attract the attention of the scholars.

New research of Chinese proverbs started in the new century, study articles of proverbs from the view of cognitive were published, such as: "The interpretation of proverbs from the conceptual integration theory" – by Fu Pingping; "Cultural precipitation and its cognition and translation of Proverbs" – by Yi Jiajing; and "Contemporary cognitive theory and the cognitive view of Proverbs" – by Kou Fuming. Meanwhile there was a book which published from the view of discourse analysis, "Pragmatic connection of Proverbs" – by Shen Huaixing. And some other articles on proverbs translation, were thorough analyzed from multi angle and full range of views.

Outline

1. Introduction

1.1 Research Background

1.2 Research Object

Literature Review

Practicability of Proverb Translation

3.1 Literal Translation

3.2 Free Translation

3.3 Combination of Literal and Free Translation

3.4 The Interpretive Method

4. Problems in English Translation of Chinese Proverbs

4.1 Limitation of Proverb Translation

4.2 Causes of Limitation of Proverb Translation

4.3 Anglicizing

4.4 Maintain National Characteristics

4.5 Not Too Literally

5. Conclusion

References

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