文化空缺词的翻译

论文总字数：29085字

摘 要

作为跨文化交流的工具，翻译在文化传播中起着至关重要的作用，促进不同文化之间的理解和交流，加速文化融合。其目的是促进语言社会的政治，经济和文化进步。语言和文化的共性使翻译成为可能，语言和文化的个性给翻译带来了许多障碍。文化差异的根源在于两种语言文化异质性的极端表现，在其发展过程中日积月累，慢慢的形成了各自文化所独有的差异，导致中英文单词对应中出现文化差距的词语。这其中也包含了文化空缺词。这给翻译人员带来困难与不便。如果不能很好的了解学习其他文化，则无法进行翻译和文化交流，对各文化之间的相互借鉴，取长补短造成重大影响。为了应对文化差距带来的问题，文化交流和翻译可以顺利进行。在当代全球化的世界中，研究文化差距和采取有效的方法是相当迫切和重要的。本文从起源，分类，原因等方面全面分析了翻译中文化空缺词的现象，探索了解决文化空缺的有效途径，力求使翻译得以顺利进行，跨文化交际得以顺利实现。

关键词：文化空缺；文化空缺词；翻译；异化；归化

Contents

1. Introduction……………………………………………....…………………1
2. Literature Review……………………...……………………………………1
3. The Classifications of Culture-gapped Words ………….………………...3

3.1 Material culture-gapped words…………………….......…………………….4

3.2 Behavioral culture-gapped words………………………………………........4

3.3 Institutional culture-gapped words…………………...……………………...5

3.4 Conceptual culture-gapped words…………….....…………………………..5

1. The Reasons for Culture-gapped Words………………………………….6

4.1 Differences in the customs……………..............……………………………6

4.2 Differences in the way of thinking…………........…………………………..7

4.3 Differences in the religious belief……………......………………………….7

4.4 Differences in the aesthetics……………............……………………………8

1. The Translation Strategies of Culture-gapped Words.......…………..9

5.1 The translation strategy of domestication ………….......……………………9

5.2 The translation strategy of foreignization…………..………………………10

5.3 The relations between domestication and foreignization...………………11

1. Conclusion.....................................................................................................11

Works Cited…………………………………………………………………...12

1. Introduction

Because of the cultural differences in historical backgrounds, social customs, religious beliefs, ideologies, each nation is peculiar about certain objects and concepts that cannot be found equivalences or corresponding expressions in other languages of a given culture. The differences between China and the Western countries in history, social customs, religious practices and ideologies generate many issues that need to be worked out. One of which is cultural gap, considered as the prime barrier in intercultural communication. Namely, some words or expressions delivers the traits of a certain culture, but they cannot be found the equivalents in another culture which express the same meaning. Lexical gap falls into one category of culturally-loaded words. It’s also termed culture-gapped words.

For the sake of illustrating the cultural gap in China and Western countries by making a contrastive study of lexical gaps, the paper comprehensively analyzes the phenomenon of culture-gapped words in translation from the origin, classifications, reasons and also explores the effective methods to solve the culture-gapped words.

2. Literature Review

In 1950s, Charks Hockett, an American linguist, as the first one to put forward the concept of ‘vacancy’. He raised ‘random holes in patterns’ to the language phenomenon while comparing grammatical patterns of two languages.(Hockett 106)

The phenomenon of ‘vacancy’ attracted the researchers’ interests and brought the heated debate. Many researchers joined in the research of vacancy in 1970s.

An American cultural anthropologist Hull discovered that the nation’s language lack of the basic colors lexicon, which exist in most of all the other languages, when he made a research to original inhabitant in Australia. He used the ‘vacancy’, ‘gap’ in his research papers. Sorokin, a Russian scholar presented the theory of ‘cultural vacancy’ in his research in 1980s, .

In 1957, Lado proposed ‘lexical gaps’ in his book Linguistics Across cultures, in which he made a contrastive study of Russian and English from perspectives of lexical gaps. Raymond Williams, in the book of Key Words----A Vocabulary to Culture and Society, wrote more than 170 words to discuss the England and America in detail. However, he did not make any contrastive studies. In 1997, Anna Wiezbicka published the book Understanding Cultures Through Their Key Words----English, Russian, Polish, German and Japanese, but it is worth noting that Chinese is not included. In domestic, Wang Dechun came up with the idea of constructing a new discipline: the study of folk custom semantics. He edited A Dictionary of Chinese Folk Custom in 1990s, which is intended to research into and contrast culturally loaded words. Nevertheless, most of the correlated studies put emphasis on the classifications of culturally loaded words in Chinese and English and translation strategies instead of making a thorough analysis of cultural vacancy on its lexical level---lexical gaps or culture-gapped words

It’s worth mentioning that the study of cultural vacancy, culture-gapped words or lexical gaps has been widely mentioned and developed in recent years. Some scholars tried to pay their attention to the study of culture-gapped words or lexical gaps, and some have made a breakthrough but this filed still need to obtain more fresh blood. Hence, more and more studies about intercultural communication, translations, culture-gapped words is of great significance.

Culture is a very broad and most humane concept, which is a historical phenomenon and a deposit of social history. It is indeed hard for us to give culture an accurate or precise definition. It is widely recognized that culture is all human spiritual activities and activities products know from politics and economy. The integration of material culture and spiritual culture during the stage of social and historical development has made a great contribution to today’s cultural system, especially spiritual culture. Language and culture are interdependent and mutually influential. With regard to the relations between the two matters, it is not hard to draw a conclusion that language is the cornerstone of culture, from another perspective, language is influenced by culture and reflects culture. It can be said that language reflects the characteristics of a nation. Translation interrelates closely with language and culture, they take what they need from each other and gives mutual devotion. Eugene Nida, a famous American linguist, translator and translation theorist, divided culture into five categories, ecology, material culture, social culture, religious culture and linguistic culture, which classify the culture roundly.

Vacancies refer to the language used by a certain nation and its associated cultural phenomena that do not exist in another nation. In the 1950s, American linguist Hockett noticed the phenomenon of cultural gap and proposed the concept of ‘random holes in patterns’ while comparing the expressions of the two languages. Later, many translation theorists also proposed different expressions. For example, Balhudarov, put forward the concept of ‘no equivalent vocabulary’ when he studied the differences in vocabulary expression in various languages. The Russian scholar Sorokin and others summed up the theory of ‘vacancy’ when discussing the uniqueness of national culture and the habits of language expression. The meaning of cultural gap is actually that, in the long years of each history, the nation has formed and developed its unique culture, and the meaning and information behind different cultures are different. The process of translation is the process of language transformation. Since language represents a unique culture, the cultural imagery and meaning of certain concepts in language do not correspond or are not equal, which forms a cultural gap between languages.

Cultural gap, referring to the facts that certain cultural factors in a country’s culture do not exist in the culture of another country, and may even lead to problems that cannot be solved temporarily. Incorrect and unreasonable understanding of cultural gap will inevitably impede the process of communication and lead to misunderstandings, and even lead to failed communication and incorrect translation. Only when the cultural gap factors are successfully and smoothly transferred to the target culture, it can be gradually understood and accepted by the target cultural receivers. With the continuous strengthening of communication, the cultural gap factors can be gradually reduced. Only the cultural gap factors are finally understood and familiar by the target cultural receivers, and the purpose of communication and translation can be realized.

3. The Classifications of Culture-gapped Words

Different researchers have different classifications of culture-gapped words. The culture-gapped words can be classified as follows generally: material culture-gapped words, behavioral culture-gapped words, institutional culture-gapped words and conceptual culture-gapped words.

3.1 Material culture-gapped words

Material culture-gapped words are the material basis of the whole cultural system. Material culture-gapped words are also scattered in every corner of people’s daily life. They can be simply summarized as clothing, food, housing, transportation, production tools, products and so on.

As we can see from the following examples:

‘I guess he didn’t know I was in the house. When I walked into the living room, he was just standing in his birthday suit.’ 

‘birthday suit’ does not mean the new clothes that you imagined to celebrate the birthday. It means ‘naked’ in English.

There are several similar cases, such as ‘pink lady(a kind of cocktail that not used a fierce raw material and is loved by the lady.)’, ‘halfway house (A halfway house is a home for people such as former prisoners, mental patients, or drug addicts who can stay there for a limited period of time to get used to life outside prison or hospital.)’ and so on.If we do not know the implication in itself, we may not make the translation smooth and right.

3.2 Behavioral culture-gapped words

Behavioral culture-gapped words includes the words about etiquette, lifestyle and interpersonal relationship.

For etiquette, we have Dragon Boat Festival, Lantern Festival but Western countries have Christmas, April Fool’s Day, Thanksgiving Day and so on. For lifestyle, we sit around the table and have the meal together, but Westerners sit partly and have their own plate and eat their own food. For interpersonal relationship, Westerners have ‘apple polish’(eat one’s toads).

If we cannot understand the cultural implication behind them, it is much difficult to translate smoothly.

3.3 Institutional culture-gapped words

Institutional culture-gapped words can be divided into family institution, education institution, political institution, economic institution, military institution, legal institution.

Referring to family institution, words reflecting in Chinese culture: ‘family planning’, ‘arranged marriage’, ‘prefer boys to girls’ and so on but words reflecting in Western culture: ‘palimony’, ‘Companionate Marriage’ and so on.

For education institution, culture-gapped words reflecting education institution in Chinese culture have ‘three-stripe’, ‘the craze for graduate school’, ‘old-style private school’, ‘six arts’. whereas, words that reflect the education institution in Western culture include the ‘Montessori Method’, ‘a missionary school’ and ‘Monitorial System’.

About political institution, culture-gapped words reflecting political institution in Chinese culture have ‘great leap forward’, ‘gang of four’, ‘one nation, two systems’ and so on. Otherwise, in Western culture, they have ‘ take the stump’, ‘ballot initiative’ and the like.

With regard to economic institution, culture-gapped words reflecting in Chinese culture have ‘special economic zones’, ‘economic system reform’ and so on, but in Western culture, they have ‘purchasing power parity (PPP)’, ‘NASDAQ’, ‘Over-the-Counter’ and so on.

When it comes to military institution, culture-gapped words reflecting in Chinese culture have ‘eight banners’, ‘central military committee’ and the like. In Western culture, they have ‘garrison’, ‘Air Force One’ and so on.

Legal institution, we have ‘telephony’, ‘abolish punishment with punishment’ and so on. In Western culture, they adopt ‘act of God’ , ‘blue law’ , ‘lynch’, ‘tar and feather’.

3.4 Conceptual culture-gapped words

Conceptual culture-gapped words contain the most aspects, such as values, the way of thinking, arts, literature, science and technology and the like. There is no need to compare one by one in detail and just take a few examples.

Culture-gapped words in Chinese culture involves‘ the three obediences and four virtues’, ‘the Mogao Grottoes’, ‘Dreams of Red Mansions’, ‘porcelain’, ‘eight trigrams’. By comparison, Western cultures comprises ‘gamesmanship’, ‘dependency culture’, ‘Broadway’, ‘Hamlet’, ‘laser comp’, ‘Remember the Marine’, ‘gospel’ and so on.

4. The Reasons for Culture-gapped Words

In the process of cultural communication, the language, culture, social backgrounds, values and even cognitive patterns of the two sides of the communication are different. When seeking the connection between context and verbal meaning, there are often differences, and the activated cognitive framework cannot be consistent, you cannot achieve the analogy mapping you should have. Cultural gap is formed in the process of intercultural communication, the uniqueness way of thinking, the differences of religious beliefs, the change of social history, the differences of national character, life attitude and values, and the existence of cultural vacancies. It is likely that the misunderstanding of information and communication failure will be caused readily.

Cultural information that both ethnic groups consider to be taken for granted is often unintelligible to people of another culture because of the existence of cultural gap. The emergence and existence of cultural gap is a very complicated problem, and it is an inevitable outcome of the process of cognition of the world relative to other nations in the process of national cognition. The geographical environment and social backgrounds of the two cultures are different, and their unique values, ways of thinking, historical origins, aesthetic tastes, etc. are very different. This is the main social root of cultural gap.

4.1 Differences in the customs

Through a long history of development, Chinese and Western languages and cultures have formed many culture-gapped words due to their different customs. Such as the idioms, proverbs. In view of the distinctions between Chinese culture and Westerns’, these culture-gapped words make it harder for translators to translate and require them to be better at transforming Chinese and English interpretations, and must be familiar with Chinese and Western cultural knowledge at the same time.

With regard to the differences in Marriage, the concept of ‘Properly matched marriage’, not strange to the Chinese people, was the standard by which one select a person to marry in traditional Chinese society. But in Western cultures, they emphasizes more on the ‘marriage of true minds’ or ‘marriage of convenience’. Before the marriage, the Chinese may choose the auspicious occasion but the Westerners may hold the bridal shower or bachelor’s party. All these may caused the cultural gap, if you do not know the both cultural history, you may not express the accurate and correct meaning in translation.

4.2 Differences in the way of thinking

Different nations belong to different social groups and have different ways of thinking, mirroring the uniqueness of thinking styles and distinctions of ethnic peculiarities. The uniqueness of thinking is the proper product of the human brain. It is also the typical mode of thinking of the social group. The way humans think has a distinct national identity.

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