The Ways of Translation Neologisms Free Essays

Translation Principles for the Translation of Neologism in News Language Abstract In the world, Chinese and English has both the longest history and most people used compared with any other language. As the society developed more and more quickly, many kind of new information came out. Including them was that, there were a lot of neologisms in Chinese words. We will write a custom essay sample on The Ways of Translation Neologisms or any similar topic only for you Order Now Many people who do English translation study found that it is much harder to translate these words than any others. New words were born from the antiquity, and they could miss the most important things happened at that moment. So translating these new words were paid much more attention by researchers. New words in this paper are all based on neologisms in news language. This thesis aimed to study the translation of neologism in news language from two aspects—word formation of new words and the background of new words. And then with the help of Yan Fu’s Translation Principles for the Translation of neologism in news language, the paper will enumerate some translation strategies and some ways to improve the quality of neologism in news language. Introduction 1. Characteristics of Neologism in News Language 2. Principles for Translation of Neologism in News Language 2. 1Yan Fu’s Translation Principles 2. 2Guidance of Yan Fu’s Translation Principles for the Translation of Neologism in News Language 2. 3Significance of Translation of Neologism in News Language 3. Word Formation of Neologism in News Language 3. 1Adding New Meaning to the Old Words 3. 2Borrowing 3. 3Derivation 3. 4Blending 3. 5Abbreviation 4. Background of Neologism in News Language 4. 1Politics and Economy 4. 2Culture 4. 3Society 5. Translation Strategies Derived from Word Formation 5. 1Literal Translation 5. 2Liberal Translation 5. 3Transliteration 5. 4Combination of Liberal Translation and Transliteration 5. 5Omission 5. 6Translation According to the Background of Neologism in News Language 6. Ways to Improve the Quality of Neologism in News Language 6. 1Understand Background Knowledge 6. 2Learn to Look up Newspaper and Magazines for Reference Conclusion Introduction With the development of society, politics, economy and any other aspects of the world, languages had been exerted profound influence. That is to say, more and more new words have entered the word bank. Since these new words have a very close relationship with all kinds of new changes, new trends and new development in our society, translators and interpreters have the responsibility to translate these new words accurately so that foreigners will learn more about China’s development and national condition (Zhang Jian, 2003). You can hear many new words such as â€Å"blog, MM, lip-synching, Golden week†, even in CCTV1’s news channel like â€Å"House slave, gunmen, hype, the cottage†. If you don’t follow the fashion, you can hardly understand these words. What’s the most important, you can never find a school to learn it. As Newmark (2001) once said, neologism is perhaps the non-literary and the professional translator’s biggest problem. Nowadays, the ways of getting massages are various, but the most convenience idea is from news. We read news from newspaper, on line, on TV, on radio and so on . So, for helping others to read and translate with so many neologism, this paper will analyze the definition and the word’s formation of neologism in news language. And then the paper will enumerate several translation strategies and some ways to improve the quality of neologism in news language. 1. Characteristics of Neologism in News Language As Chen Chuxiang (1998) said: neologisms are relative. It is a new word today, and it may be not tomorrow. Zhang Jian (2007) thought, â€Å"News reports are open to the public, reflect the trend of times immediately, and hold responsibility for the whole society. These characteristics have determined the basic principles of news reports—honesty, accuracy and fairness. Therefore, translation of news language must also comply with these principles, and be easy to understand. Besides, Zhang Jian (2008) also said, as a branch of translation, news translation should comply with the principles of translation, too. At the same time, considering the special demands of news coverage and the fact that it is published to the public, and immediately reflects the trend of our times, when doing news translation,one should treat these basic principles much more flexibly. One should come up with the specific methods when meeting specific problems (Zhang Jian, 2007). As Nida, E. A. and Taber, C. (1982) once pointed out, â€Å"each language has its own genius†¦ Rather than force the formal structure of one language upon another, the effective translator is quite prepared to make any and all formal changes necessary to reproduce the message in the distinctive structural forms of the receptor language. † The Oxford Dictionary of New Words (1991) defines a new word as word; phrase or meaning that came into popular use or enjoyed a vogue during a certain period of time. These words is said to be the â€Å"weather report† to mirror the character all kind of area and time of the word. 2. Principles for Translation of Neologism in News Language 2. 1Yan Fu’s Translation Principles Translation principles and criteria can give instruction to translators. Also, they are the standards to measure translation quality (Wang Qi Yang Jingning, 2003). In China, since the great scholar Yan Fu put forward the three principles of â€Å"faithfulness†, â€Å"expressiveness†, â€Å"elegance†, more than a hundred years has passed. Yet it still exerts great influence for the current translation activity. According to Shen Suru (1998), â€Å"faithfulness† means that the translated version must first be true and loyal to the original version. Sometimes, in order to faithfully convey the meaning of the original text, form of the target language may not be consistent with the source language. â€Å"Expressiveness† refers to the principle that the content of the original version (including meaning, information, style etc) should be expressed in the target language very well so that readers can fully understand its original meaning. Elegance† means that the style of the target language must be true to that of the source language. â€Å"Elegance† concerns about the language style, therefore, when talking about the principle of â€Å"elegance†, people will usually focus on the translation of a passage. Since this thesis focus on the words translation, the principle of â€Å"eleganceâ €  will not be discussed here . In order to avoid various kinds of wrong translations and to improve the translation quality of new words, we should acquire the main principles of new words translation. . 2Guidance of Yan Fu’s Translation Principles for the Translation of Neologism in News Language ( 2. 2 , ) While employing Yan Fu’s translation principles to instruct the translation of neologism, we should pay much attention to many aspects special the following three. First of all, the basic principles of news reports—honesty and accuracy require the translator to fully understand the meaning of the neologism in news language, and to translate it exactly, without any incorrectness or distortion. Second, the principle of fairness requires that the translated version must be objective, with no emotional factor, for instance, discrimination. Third, because news reports are open to the public, translation of neologism in news language must take every person’s education background into consideration, trying to be as plain as possible and avoiding using some vague words. Research about the word formation of neologism in news language will help translators to learn more about the origin of new words. Some neologism in news language is developed from the old one. So it must have some connection with the old one. Having known the word formation of new words, one can easily understand the meaning. From this aspect, word formation can help translators adhere to the principle of â€Å"faithfulness†. However, not all the new words will show their meaning through their word formation. We can not understand their meaning by their word formation. Jia Wenbo (2008) once pointed out in the CE Translation for Current Affairs: from the perspective of linguistics, the meaning of a certain word can be grouped into connotation and reference. Reference means a linguistic form that refers to the real, physical world; it deals with the relationship between the linguistic element and the non-linguistic world of experience. It will be bothered by the outside factors, like context. Connotation refers to the meaning of a word that is added by its users. It is beyond the language itself and relates to people’ feeling and social behaviors. Sometimes, it can have political significance, social significance, situational significance, historic significance, cultural significance and other meanings in a certain cultural environment. It usually emerges from peoples’ emotion and thinking. Therefore, this kind of meaning is subjective and is hard to discover. Usually it hides behind the reference. Its expression highlights contextual factor, cultural factor, personal feeling. The accurate meaning is uncertain. For such kind of new words, we should pay more attention to their background information. Usually, their background information may give us some hint about their meaning. It is obvious that background information is conducive to the understanding of the meaning if neologism in news language. So background information will do a lot for translators to achieve the goal of â€Å"faithfulness†. In addition, relevant background information of new words in a certain field will help translators to learn more about right way to express their meaning. They will be very careful to choose the right words and employ some terms in the certain field to express their meaning. For example, if a new word emerges from politics, one may choose some formal words rather than some casual ones when doing translation. From this aspect, we may say that background information can also improve the expressiveness of translation. . 3Significance of Translation of Neologism in News Language As Shang Hong (2008) once pointed out, â€Å"With the further improvement of external publicity work, we need to show a more positive and brand new China to the rest of the world. The translation of Chinese new words plays a vital role in promoting our external propaganda work and cultural transmission. The refore, to translate these Chinese new words well will definitely improve the overall quality of Chinese-English translation as well as receive fruitful result from the external propaganda work†. By the same token, good translation of English new words will also help us to learn more about English-speaking countries, including their development in many social aspects, like economy, science technology, culture and so on. In this information era, how to translate these new words more effectively so that it will become easier for readers both from at home and abroad to accept and learn new things is of great significance. The translator should not only have a good command of both English and Chinese language, but also keep the pace with the development of modern society. Hence, to translate these new words is a laborious but not satisfying job (Yang Quanhong, 2003). To translate these new words, it is essential to come up with useful translation principles. 3. Word Formation of Neologism in News Language Neologism in news language is born with the society development, and it can mirror the most important things of that moment (Strang , Babara,1990). Liu Mingdong and Jiang Xuejun (2002) once classified the word formation of English new words into six groups: adding affixes, transferring, compounding, blending, abbreviation and adding new meaning to the old words. And Han Guoqing (2003) classified the word formation of English new words into Compounding, Borrowing from Proper Nouns, Abbreviation, and Borrowing from Foreign Languages. Besides, Huang Ping (2006) also classified the word formation of English new words into another six categories: Derivation, Compounding, Abbreviation, Blending, Analogical Creation, and Semantic Extension. All the above-mentioned word formation is related to the English new words. Few scholars have done some systematic research into the word formation of Chinese new words. 3. Adding New Meaning to the Old Words The most directness way to create a new word is adding new meaning to the old word. By this way, one can easily to remember a word and it can be very colorful meaning. By doing so, the original expression of the word has been divided into a new lexeme. From this aspect, we can say that if a word gains a new meaning, it has added a new lexeme to the vocabulary (Wang Rongpei, 2000). Such as space shuttle? sof tware? video phone think tank and so on. 3. 2Borrowing Borrowing words means using the basic meaning to decorate the new things. Through this way, these words can much more quickly spread and give person a easy way to realize. For example, â€Å"window† means an opening in the wall of a building which now have an other means as the window on computer. The same to the word â€Å"mouse†, it means a small animal with along tail, but now almost everyone know it refer to a tool with computer. 3. 3Derivation Vocabulary system is a developing system, and it not only proceeds words which are useful, but also change them, switch them, abound them and expand itself(,1999). Now we live in cyber society, so many new words about cyber appear. Like cyberspace , cyberage , cyberrevolution, cyberculture, cybernews, cyberlove, cybermania, cybercafe, cybercrime, cyberfraud, cyberlan , cyberporn, cybersickness, cyberkidnapper and so on. As we see, cyber above all means. Ayto(1999) pointed out that, from now on, the most used way to formation a new word is blending ,and almost three forth of new words are created by this way. 3. 4Blending We put two different meaning words into one new word, and it is named blending. Many Chinese new words are all born from this way ,so are English words. Internet? netizen? modem? email? codec ? avionics? smartdrv? forex? stagfla2tion? oopetitio? prosumer ? netiquette ? informania ? p sywar ( ),these words can be saw everywhere in news. When we use them, we may keep a habit like below: Netiquette ( )=et (? ) + etiquette ( ) ; informania ( )=information( )+mania (? )? We carry the front meaning of the first word and the tail of the second word together to be the new word. Besides some words are s craped by their conception like email ( )=electronic +mail ; netizen=network + citizen Barnhart(1995) wrote the book The Barnhart Dictionary of New English Since 1963. It had more than 6000 new words and about 900 words came from this way. 3. Abbreviation An abbreviation (from Latin brevis, meaning â€Å"short†) is a shortened form of a word or phrase. Usually, but not always, it consists of a letter or group of letters taken from the word or phrase. The shortened form of a phrase can be referred to as acronym. And the shortened form of a word can be called as clipped words. The first category is usually applied in the abbreviation of many organizations and proper nouns, such as â€Å"PC (personal computer)†, â€Å"PDA (personal digital assistant)†, â€Å"SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organization)†, â€Å"DINK (double incomes, no kids)†Ã¢â‚¬ ¦ In Chinese, we can also find such kind of new words, such as â€Å" )†, â€Å" ( )†,â€Å" ( + + ) †. 4. Background of Neologism in News Language 4. 1Politics and Economy ( ) After the afire of Watergate, this word spreads all over the word. So as the women liberation sport, after it , many new words came about like chairwoman( ),mono-sex( )? And the words deflation( )),value added tax( ),Euro( )come from Economy slump. During the 2009, the most famous black people Barack Obama let the whole world’s people know him. As a result, the new words using his name are born here and there. For example, adding (fy) behind the Obama was used widely. Could you please leave your hate and bigotry to the polit2ical forums? I want to talk football please. Thanks in advance. † â€Å"I understand your point, however, when you Obamafy your profile on he re, you invite political discourse. Kudos on the standard / hate and bigotry0 comment toward those who don’t want the junior Senator from ACORN to occupy the White House†. Besides, last year, the economic cris is has made many countries’ economy suffer great loss, affecting every aspect of our life. At the same time, many new words have emerged. Economic crisis has changed people’s living style. In their daily life, people begin to become economical. In order to advocate thrift way of living style, many newspapers and magazines launched â€Å"hundred yuan ( )† activity. 4. 2Culture Chinese people like the color red, and red is the national color. In China, red means lucky, happy and enthusiasm. To celebrate festival, wedding, and form, people use red to express welfare and mascot. Brides dressed in red, many lantern hung on the door with the color red, and the people who got the most welcome is called red people. So we can see many new phrases with red like red carpet red cedar ; red cell ; Red Cross ; red flag ; red scarf ; bright red ; red clay ; red blood cell ; red thread ; the red maple leaves. ( ) 4. 3Society Since 80th and 90th in the last century, with the rapid popularizing of computers and spread of Internet, the Internet culture has been causing significant changes in every corner of our life. A good case in point is â€Å"Blog†. Almost every net izen has a blog site, some even more. Many words related to blog has also entered our vocabulary, like â€Å" or Blogosphere†, â€Å" r celeblog†, â€Å" or charity blogger†, â€Å" or tree hole post†, â€Å" or online post bar† and so on. 5. Translation Strategies Derived from Word Formation Word formation has a close relationship with the translation of new words. Usually, five ways are employed in the translation of new words. They are literal translation, liberal translation, transliteration, combination of liberal translation and transliteration, and omission. For words which belong to a certain kind of word formation, we can use suitable measures to translate them. 5. 1Literal Translation Literal translation, also known as direct translation, is the rendering of text from one language to another in the way of â€Å"word-for-word† form. This kind of translation strategy can easily maintain the form of the source language. Usually we translate words one by one for example mad cow disease ( ) , Internet bar ( ) , compari2son – shop ( ) , video conference ( ) ,information superhighway ( ) , Gulf War Syn2drom ( ) , business tourism ( ) ,golden goal ( ) , chemotherapy ( ) , genet2ic engineering( ) , community care ( ) ,gene therapy( ,magnetic shift ( )and so on. It is very easy for Chinese people who just learn English for a short time and they can translate accurately like others. 5. 2Liberal Translation In liberal translation, the translated version must keep the content of the source language, but may have difference in its form. When words translated in such way first appear in news, readers may feel very strange. But they will soon be accepted by the publ ic. This method is usually applied to the translation of new words formed by word formation of â€Å"adding new meaning to old words† and borrowing. For example generalist /versatile educating( ) ? South Korean Trend ( ) ? pyramid selling( ) ? nest egg ( ) ? quiz kid ( ) ? mind relief ( ) and so on. Such as golf widow, football widow, TV widow, and computer widow, these are not meaning of women who lost husbands. They means women’s husbands enjoy golf, football, TV, computer so that forget they have wives. 5. 3Transliteration ( ) There are many words we had never seen them before, so we could not know their Chinese meaning. So we could only translate them by their pronunciation. Such as (Disco) , ( bikini) , ( clone) , hacker) , (media) , ( blog) , (? ) cool, ( ) talk show. And sometimes we could even know little of the meaning ,so we can together these two ways to translate like yuppie ( ) ,A IDS ( ) , bungee – jump ing( ) , beeper (BP? ) , pickup ( ) , gene bank ( ) 5. 4Combination of Liberal Translation and Transliteration Both liberal translation and transliteration have some drawbacks. To make full use of liber al translation and transliteration, and to avoid their disadvantages, translators usually employ a more effective method—the combination of liberal translation and transliteration. A good case in point is â€Å"bungee†. In Chinese, it is translated into â€Å" †, which has expressed the original meaning very well. â€Å" † is translated according to the pronunciation, and the word â€Å"? †, which means limitation, has reflected the spirit of this activity—to challenge the limitation. The word â€Å"? † which is translated according to its meaning, has shown the nature of this new sport—jumping from a tall building. Besides, since there are many kinds of jumping in Chinese, such as â€Å" †, â€Å" †, the Chinese version will not sounds strange to Chinese readers. So we can say that the Chinese version â€Å" is a very successful translation example in terms of â€Å"faithfulness† and â€Å"expressiveness†. Another example is â€Å" †. One of its English versions is â€Å"taikonaut (It refers to the Chinese astronauts exclucively)†. Obviously, the first part â€Å"taiko † is translated according to the pronunciation â€Å" †. By doing so, it has kept the original flavor of the Chinese phrase, therefore, being true to the original version. The second part â€Å"naut† means sailor. When combined together, they have reflected the original meaning of a person who travels in space for the Chinese space program. Also, the suffix is often seen in English, as in the words â€Å"astronaut† and â€Å"aeronaut†, so the English version â€Å"taikonaut† has also conform to the word formation in English, and is easy for readers from English-speaking countries to understand. 5. 5Omission With more and more people today using English in life, work, game, English has become one aspect of Chinese people. Many Chinese communicated to foreigners especially people who speak in English. We may talk both in Chinese and English mixed in sentences. And what’s more, some words can be heard or saw here and there just like Chinese word. When we reading books, massages, papers, watching TV, surfing on line, we will meet â€Å" MBA, WTO, IT ,CD, VCD, DVD, MTV†. We can use them directly without translating. 5. 6Translation According to the Background of Neologism in News Language As mentioned above, background information of neologism may help translators to improve the quality of translation in terms of both â€Å"faithfulness† and â€Å"expressiveness†. For some new words, if one translates these words only according to the facial meaning of a word, he probably can not faithfully express the essence of the sources words, and reflect the trend of times. By doing so, he has violated the basic principles of neologism translation—â€Å"faithfulness†. However, if one knows more about the background information of new words, he will find it easy to understand the connotation of new words, and make the translated version equal to the original one. The following are some examples: a. â€Å"Obamican†: If a translator knows nothing about the 2008 general election in America, as well as both the Republican’s and the Democrat’s support for Obama, he will probably not know that â€Å"Obamican† is blended by Obama and Republican. He may even not know that this word refers to certain Republicans who are deeply attracted by Obama’s personal charisma, and chose to vote for Obama in the election. Therefore, it is inappropriate for some to translate it into â€Å" †. A relatively suitable version is â€Å" †. Though it seems a little bit long, it has reflected the original meaning of â€Å"Obamican† exactly, and is easy for Chinese readers to understand. b. â€Å"BRIC†: If someone does not know that this new word appeared against the background of rapid economic development in these four countries—Brazil, Russia, India and China, he will probably translate it into â€Å" or so. Now, a widely used version is â€Å" †. Here, the Chinese word â€Å"? † has shown the economic power of these four countries, expressing the original meaning of four fast growing economies. And the Chinese word â€Å"? † reflected that the English version has the same pronunci ation as â€Å"brick†. In addition, the Chinese version sounds very fluent. It has grasped the background of the word â€Å"BRIC† and treated the basic principles of translation of news language very flexibly. By doing so, the Chinese version has fulfilled the requirement of â€Å"faithfulness† and â€Å"expressiveness†. . â€Å" †: When first comes to know this word; one may want to translate it into â€Å"kind customers†. A further research may lead him to understand that this term refers to people who sign onto a charity Website to donate money to the needy or set up blogs for charity purposes by using their real names. So a better English version is â€Å"charity bloggers†. The word â€Å"charity† has conveyed the original meaning of being kind, and the word â€Å"blogger† has shown that such kind of persons practice philanthropy though blogs. Therefore, the English version has faithfully conveyed its original meaning. On the other hand, the English version also conforms to the word formation of compounding. So it can be easy for English readers to understand. 6. Ways to Improve the Quality of Neologism in News Language ( , ) According to the above analysis, we may find that to translate new words in news language is by no means an easy task, though it only involves the most basic words translation. The process of translating these most basic new words involves knowledge in almost every field. Though the analysis in the previous parts of this thesis can not give us a definite answer, still it has provided some very important pieces of suggestion for us. 6. 1Understand Background Knowledge The news translation involves information from every aspect of our life. For example, when translating sports news, one has to know certain terms in sport, while translating economic news, one must knew well about economics. If a translator is not interested in and sensitive to new things and new phenomena, he will feel puzzled, and may even not understand the source word. On the contrary, if one has the habit of reading newspaper and magazines, he will find these new words easy to handle. So, news translators must pay special attention to these new words, and have a good command of their background information. 6. 2Learn to Look up Newspaper ; Magazines for Reference Of course, it is almost impossible to get familiar with every new thing and new phenomenon. After all, different person has different hobbies and interests. Some will pay more attention to news in certain fields, while totally neglecting other news. When translating news event that one is not very familiar with, one must learn to make full use of various kinds of resource. For some proper names, there is a standard translation version. We can find it in some state-owned newspapers, magazines, or televisions, like People’s Daily, China Daily, New York Times†¦ By doing so, one can avoid some unnecessary misunderstandings as well as some wrong translations. Conclusion The present paper is an attempt to the research about the translation of neologism in new language. From the above analysis, it is obvious to see that the translation of neologism in news language is a huge task. Sometimes, we can translate new words according to their word formation. And sometimes, we should consider from the perspective of their background information. Now matter what kind of translation measure one may employ, he must adhere to the basic principle of translation, acquire background information well, and learn to learn to look up newspaper ; magazines for reference. How to cite The Ways of Translation Neologisms, Papers