还“龙”一个公道——从词汇空缺看“龙”之英译

Translation of "龙" in Terms of Lexical Vacancy

由于中华民族和西方各族在文化习俗、思维方式以及社会环境方面存在巨大的差异,语言作为文化传播的载体也呈现出巨大的差异性,"龙"这一具有丰富文化内涵的词语,在英语中存在空缺现象,dragon与"龙"之间其实是假对应关系。在剖析其他新译的基础上,遵循异化策略,采用音兼意译的方法,可得出"‘龙’即为Long"的结论。

“龙”, a culturally - bounded word, fails to find its equivalence in English because Chinese and English have different peoples live in different geographic, political, economic environments ,and have different histories and cultures, which leads to lexical vacancy.At first the author analyzes the adequacy of the suggested translations of “龙” - Loong and Chinese dragon. Then, directed by the translation strategy of foreignization, the author puts forward another one, long, as the standard version through the method of the combination of transliteration and free translation.