利用语料库和其他网络资源筛选汉语新词的英译对应词——“以人为本”的英译个案研究

Using Corpora and other Internet Resources to Choose the English Equivalents of Chinese Neologisms: A Case Study of the English Translations of the Chinese Keyword Yirenweiben

自20世纪80年代以来,尤其是经过最近二十年的发展,"以人为本"这个由旧词获得新义的新词已经成熟,成为政治、经济、管理等多个领域的重要关键词。现在通过互联网能查到"以人为本"的多种英译。数量虽多,但质量存在差异。现有的汉英词典(包括在线词典)也存在收录不全或者提供不当译文等问题。针对这一现状,本文介绍如何筛选"以人为本"的英译对应词。筛选过程中使用英语语料库和其他网络资源,还结合联合国正式文件中的实例探讨候选英译对应词的可接受程度及适用语境。该研究可为汉英翻译和汉英词典编纂提供参考。

Since 1980s, especially over the past two decades, the Chinese neologism yirenweiben （peo- ple-oriented） has become a key word in such fields as politics, economics and management. However, the translated versions of the key word available on the Internet are of widely differing quality, some of which are even wrong. Existing Chinese-English dictionaries, including online dictionaries, do not have certain English translation equivalents already in use, or contain inappropriate English translations of the key word. Against this background, we report the work of choosing the English equivalents of yirenweiben from existing translations. Corpora and other Internet resources are used in the selection process. The as- sessment of the candidate equivalents is based on frequency counts obtained from English corpora and ex- amples extracted from the official documents of the United Nations. The verified equivalents, together with the information about the acceptability and the applicable contexts, are informative for learners, teachers, translators or interpreters, and may also serve as a reference when Chinese-English dictionaries are updated.