A CROSS -CULTURE -PERSPECTIVE

ON

    THE TRANSLATION OF THE CHINESE CHARACTER “LONG”

Zhang Jianping

2006.07

Abstract: This research I did, namely “A CROSS CULTURE PERSPECTIVE ON THE TRANSLATION OF THE CHINESE CHARACTER ‘LONG’ ”, is in the translation area. Because language is the content of the culture, firstly, I traced the history of “long” in China, also the “dragon” in the western world, in order to find out what kind of the images of those two words were formed in people’s mind. Then by comparison of their differences, I sum up the main idea of “long”. This character not only indicates the traditional Chinese mythological animal, but also the meanings of being imperial, powerful, prosperous even talented etc. And “dragon” is just simply the “evil” image in westerners’ mind. So when doing translation or interpreting, we should not take the differences of culture background for granted and take the culture information gap into consideration.

Key words: long; dragon; translation; interpreting

I.                    Introduction

Chinese people like using some kinds of “lucky words” in their daily communication. Take the famous brand “Pepsi” for example. Chinese people translate it into “Bai Shi Ke Le”, which means everything goes well. “Long”, a kind of traditional Chinese mythological animal, bears the meaning of being imperial, powerful, prosperous and even talented etc. It is wildly use in people’s daily life. In English, we have “dragon”. It just simply indicates a kind of “evil’ monster, evil things in the western people’s mind. The reason why I do this research is because I find that nowadays, many a mainstream Chinese media, book, or person, when they do the translation; they just always ignore the culture differences. They would like to put the “long” into “dragon” in English. That causes the misunderstandings. I, doing this research, using  “long” as a typical example, would like to put forward the idea that “dragon” and “long” are two totally different ideas. They do not correspond with each other.

II.                 Literature Review

Searching deeply from the books been published to the resources from the Internet, nowadays I find that there are few experts has done the research concerning this topic. What only can I find is just the studies on the Chinese Culture of “long”. And that is on the history aspect. Few experts do the research on translation area. On the “dragon” part, the studies is even less. So I think this topic is worth discussing. In order to do this research, I have searched various kinds of media resources including the library, Internet or doing the interview with some knowledgeable teachers. As I know that Language is the content of culture. I do my research, firstly, I show the image of “long” in Chinese people’ mind, I have found out Yi.Qian, and Liji. Liyun, which are two of the oldest Chinese masterpiece of History, also many words from a great number of famous Chinese dictionaries.

   On “dragon”, as we all know in the English vocabulary, Latin and Greek has provided English with the rich resources for word formation .So I quoted some of the history, relating to the dragon from the Greek mythology, in view of showing the “evil” image of that word. And then by comparison we can see the culture difference. This is the first step to do the translation works.