Non Equivalent Words

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On Translation of Non-equivalent Words in Student's Practical Bilingual English-Chinese Dictionary (Second Edition) Zeng Gengxian School of Foreign Languages, Sun Yat-sen University 1. Introduction In the age of globalization, the connection between China and other countries all over the world is becoming increasingly closer. People communicate with each other in the fields of business, finance, politics, tourism, education and so forth. Language, especially the lingua franca English, plays an extremely crucial role in the process of communication. Nowadays, a great number of Chinese people are learning English at a very young age. And as is known to all, a bilingual dictionary with good quality is of great significance to English-learners.…show more content…
Chinese people usually associate“个人主义”with the words like "selfish" and "self-centered", although it should not be the true meaning of “个人主义”，many Chinese people still hold this stereotype meaning deep down in their hearts, which is very different from the meaning of "individualism" in English. It is related to the positive things like freedom, but the translation in this dictionary will directly lead people to think of the term in a negative side. The cultural differences lead to another lexical gap in the word "individualism", in which case people cannot find a corresponding word in Chinese to express the original word in the same meaning and function. And this kind of translation of non-equivalent words in the dictionary is also a failure to reach the goal of…show more content…
In some non-equivalent words of different cultural meanings, or some words with extended meanings, it failed to translate effectively. The reason for this maybe is the weak awareness of the dictionary compliers to pay more attention to the translation of non-equivalent words. While in other areas like words have different range of meanings and words that embody people's different attitudes and emotions, it did a good job by providing knowledge background. According to Zhao, a dictionary should always keep in mind that an equivalent is supposed to be both faithful to the original and"user-friendly"to the reader. (Zhao, 2006:121) Many researchers have provided a variety of methods in translating non-equivalent words, such as transliteration, direct translation, free translation, etc. In this way, the bilingual dictionary compliers should lay more emphasis on translating words that have no equivalence, and try to make the translation more professional by providing more cultural information and meaning explanation, instead of translate them directly without any illustrations. Only in this way can bilingual dictionaries become more

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