US-China Education Review B, ISSN 2161-6248
February 2014, Vol. 4, No. 2, 146-150
代价英文
Cultural Factors Behind Semantic Differences *
Wang Xiao-yan Changchun University, Changchun, China
The prent paper discuss something about translating between English and Chine from a cultural point of view.
The paper, first of all, gives a brief account of the relationship between language and culture. So, in the cond part,
by analyzing some examples, the paper explores the cultural factors that contribute to explain mantic differences
in Chine and English: different religious factors, historical factors, and thinking modes. Translation is the major
way of cultural exchange. In the third part, the paper suggests some translation principles: faithfulness,
acceptability, and taking degree of cultural fusion into consideration. The paper aims to promote the establishment
of the cultural point of view toward translating.
Keywords: cultural factors, mantic difference, translation
Introduction
It is a common thought about translating that each word should put into its counterpart of the target language. Most time, it is right to do so, but, on some occasions, it does not work. Sometimes, people even feel at a loss when they read translated versions. Language is the carrier of culture. On the one hand, language tends to reflect a nation’s cultural background. On the other hand, every element of a culture has its influences on language. Word is the basic unit of language (Zhang, 1999,
p. 153). Words carry meanings for the language, and meaning is not isolated, it is the reflection of a certain culture, which determines the meaning and reveals its shadow through the meaning. If we compare words of a language to leaves of a tree, then, culture is the root of the tree. What the leaves look like depends on the condition of the root.
A nation’s culture gradually takes its shape in people’s living, working, and other social activities. Each nation has its unique culture, becau each has its own path of development. Therefore, it ems that no two words in any two languages ever have precily the same meaning. Only when a word is in a certain culture, does it have a definite meaning. Being put into another culture, it is possibly of another meaning. Semantic differences ari on such occasions.
Cultural Factors Contributing to Explain Semantic Differences
There are a lot of words or terms of both the two languages which are emingly synonymous but actually refer to quite different objects or conceptions. Most of this kind of phenomena finds their roots in cultural distinction analysis. The cultural distinctions between China and English-speaking countries, mainly Britain and America, exist in history, social systems, living habits, ways of thing, etc.. Many cultural factors contribute * Acknowledgement: T
his paper is a part of the results of the rearch program “The Application of Cycle Monitoring Theory in the Procedure of SLA” (2010, No. 217), in which the author has participated.
Wang Xiao-yan, associate professor, School of Foreign Languages, Changchun University.
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CULTURAL FACTORS BEHIND SEMANTIC DIFFERENCES 147snowing
to explain mantic differences.
1. Languages originate from people’s living, working, and other social activities.
The meaning of a word is surely branded with the features of the environment from which it comes.
Words of both languages with different originating backgrounds can hardly be equivalent, even if they have the
same surface meaning.
For example, “知识分子” (zhi shi fen zi) is usually translated into English as “intellectual”, for they are
literally corresponding. But in fact, their referents are not equivalent. The Modern Chine Dictionary (Lu,
respect是什么意思1983) explains the meaning of the term “知识分子” as “People who have relatively higher education or people
who are engaged in mental work” (translated into English). In everyday life, Chine people u the term “知识
分子” to refer to teachers, college students, doctors, engineer, etc.. In some under-developed areas, even
middle-school students are considered as “知识分子”, becau they do have “relatively higher education” than
other people in the area. While in Western countries, the word “intellectual”only refers to people who have
high education and academic status. Tracing the history of the two words gives us some explanation about their
mantic difference.
The root of the word “intellectual”is “intellect”. According to Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary (Neufeldt, 1982), the word “intellectual” was first ud in 1594, when bourgeois, as a cultured class, came into
being in Europe. At that time, it referred to this newly-born class with higher education, who are only a small
percentage of the population. While the Chine term “知识分子” never appeared until the beginning of the
20th century, when Marxism was spread into China. It was widely ud, especially after the May 4th
Movement, in which young students played the key role. The term “知识分子”, thus, refers to people who have
certain scientific and social knowledge. It covers a fairly wide scope of members of our society.
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Thus, equivalent as pairs of terms em that they actually refer to different things for the different social and historical background of their origination. Although, so far, as many words are concerned, the details of
their history are forgotten or neglected, becau words keep developing instead of staying still after they
appeared. Their historical background still functions deeply beneath the surface of a language,becau they
refer to different groups of people, and even some corresponding words with the same referent are not
necessarily equivalent.
Take another English word “owl” (“猫头鹰” (mao tou ying) in Chine) for example. In China, people dislike owls and often associate bad luck and misfortune with them. But in English-speaking countries, people
believe that owls stand for wisdom. Both the Chine word and the English word refer to the same ki
nd of bird,
but the associations about the bird are quite different.
韩剧幽灵片尾曲
With their culture originated from pictograph, Chine people like thinking in images. The appearance of things occupies an important position in their emotion. They like to associate some abstract concepts with
animals or plants in nature according to their appearances or characteristics. Although no one is so foolish that
he/she thinks beautiful things as good and ugly ones as bad, Chine people are ud to putting good things
together with tho things that make people feel bright and lively and evil things with tho dark and shade.
Owls always come out at night and their appearance makes people unpleasant. Generally speaking, it is a kind
of dark and stealthy animal in Chine people’s eye. But Western people think in a different way. In their
opinion, owls, that come out at night while others are sleeping, is a symbol of different thought with the
ordinary. In this ca, it is the different aesthetics mentality and ways of thinking of peoples that matter.
2. Religion is a key part of a culture.
CULTURAL FACTORS BEHIND SEMANTIC DIFFERENCES
148
It influences people’s character and ways of thinking, and then, decides people’s attitudes toward some words.
Buddhism is an esntial part of Han Culture. Thousands of years of Chine history has witnesd that the theory and ideas of Buddhism have influenced in the Han people greatly. Buddhism considers life as just
1ife itlf, while wealth and material treasures in life are only transient clouds. It maintains that people should
have few desires to clean the soul and gain the happiness of life. Chine people’s attitude toward life is
consciously and unconsciously, more or less influenced by this opinion. Although they encourage “上进心”
(shang jin xin), they do not think to desire or pursue too much is proper. This is why the word “ambitious”,
which carries a positive meaning in English, often makes Chine people not so pleasant. In English-speaking
countries, especially in the USA, who developing history determines that the social system and people’s
mentality encourage the accumulation of personal wealth and highly prai tho people who achieve their
隔板英文
goals through their own efforts. They think it is fair and square only if what they have got is due to their own
hard working. The distinction between the emotional coloring of the corresponding words “ambitious” and “富
有野心的” (fu you ye xin de) in Chine brings misunderstanding in people’s communication.
A Few Suggested Translation Principles
Translation is the bridge between two languages (Jiao, 2012, p. 11).It is the source language and the underlying culture on its one end and the target on the other. To make the two ends communicate and
understand each other is the purpo of translation.
Language is the dress of ideas. Translating is to put the source ideas into target language, just like changing the dress of an idea into another one, so that the idea can be understood by the target language urs. All Rights Rerved.
The target text has a different form, but provides an equivalent comment, which requires faithfulness to the
source text. The esnce of being faithful is faithfulness to the meaning but not to the language itlf. The
meaning of a word consists of two layers, meaning on the surface and meaning beneath the surface.
fortyFaithfulness to the meaning is to be faithful to both of them. Or if full faithfulness cannot be achieved,
faithfulness to the deep meaning is more significant.
A word’s literal meaning can be found in dictionaries, which is far from enough. To comprehend a word
only on the surface is often found misleading. Attention to cultural background is required so as to grasp the
preci value of a word.
For example, “不孝有三，无后为大” (bu xiao you san, wu hou wei da) (There are three ways of being an unfilial son, but having no son to inherit the status and the surname is the most rious item) is an old Chine
saying. Why should “后” (hou) be translated into son or boy, but not a child? Chine people of old age looked
down upon females and female children were not regarded as true descendants. But Western people have
different n of value. Only pointing out the definite referent of “后” can the native English-speakers be
provided with the preci meaning of the word.俄语电影
Therefore, acceptability is another crucial factor for the success of translating. Keeping in mind whether the translation work can be accepted and understood by future readers, a translator needs to take cultural
background of the target language into consideration. Some special dealing techniques are required
for words
with strong cultural flavor.
For another example, “买菜” (mai cai) is so familiar to Chine people, and it ldom occurs to them to think carefully about its concrete meaning. But, when doing translating work, the term “买菜” is not so easy to
CULTURAL FACTORS BEHIND SEMANTIC DIFFERENCES 149
deal with “菜” (cai), which literally means “vegetables”. But in fact, to Chine people, “菜” here is a concept
that refers not only to vegetables, but also to meat, fish, eggs, etc.. “买菜” actually means to buy all kinds of
raw materials for Chine style dishes. Western people have quite different habit in eating and drinking. They
have no the concept of “买菜” as Chine people do. What they usually do is to buy ready or half-ready food,
such as hamburgers, milk, meat, butter, etc.. Their dishes are also different from the Chine ones, usually fried
steak, sausage, or something like that. Western people’s concept on dish is not like what Chine people have,
and they have no corresponding term for the Chine term “买菜”.So, if “买菜” is translated literally as “to
buy vegetables”, most of its meaning is missing. But neither can free translation, such as “to do some shopping
for dinner”express its meaning accurately. Chine people buy raw materials for meals almost every day or
even more than once a day. The habit of the Western people is usually to go shopping once a week and what
they buy are not defined to food and drink. The existence of cultural gap makes it necessary to give up some
distinctive features of the original and to adapt it to the target culture.
There are gaps between cultures. But it does not mean that each culture is an isolated one. Various cultures in the world exchange with each other and ep into each other, especially in such an age of information. As
i know him so welltwo influential developed countries, the British and American culture keep infiltrating into other cultures
almost every day, and vice versa. After China has opened up, Chine culture is not unknown to the world any
more. Rapid economic development of China has promoted China’s status in the world. Various degrees of
fusion exist among various cultures in the whole world. Cultural exchanging leads to cultural fusion sooner or
later. The gap between cultures can never disappear, but it becomes narrower and narrower slowly and
constantly.
Translating is a major way of cultural exchanging. Translating itlf is a complicated and dynamic activity All Rights Rerved.
with high degree of practicality. The existence of translating theories does not mean that tho theories could
apply to all problems arising in translating. As for dealing with mantic difference, things are especially the
same. Translating is translating meaning (Nida, 2000, p. 126). The fundamental intention of translating is to
exchange between different languages and cultures. The goal of successful exchange attained and the specific
techniques employed are not so important. Semantic difference should be handled flexibly according to
wasted
concrete conditions. If there are some principles, they are faithfulness, acceptability, and taking degree of
cultural fusion into consideration. What remains to be pointed out is that when formal correspondence conflicts
with the equivalence in terms of meaning, priority should be given to the later to maintain the equivalence of
meaning.
Conclusions
Cultural distinctions are now widely noticed. As trans-cultural communication, translation is confronted with the challenge of cultural distinctions, which must be overcome to transfer the meaning and even the spirit
of the original. The problems and examples about translating prented above are actually only a drop of the
ocean. It is not possible or necessary to bring the whole ocean here. The purpo of this paper is not to provide
an overall direction for translation. In fact, even articles or books on translating cannot cover the vast scope of
translating. Translating is like arts and requires creativity. Through analyzing only some of the mantic
differences, the paper is to promote the establishment of the cultural point of view toward translating and to
evoke further rearch on this topic.
CULTURAL FACTORS BEHIND SEMANTIC DIFFERENCES
150
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