英汉语言对比-术语翻译

1.dynamicity of language 语言的动态性

It refers to a distinctive feature of Chinese. Compared with English, Chinese have a much higher degree of dynamicity. It puts more emphasis on motion or action, which finds its expression in verbs and adverbs; however, English seems to lay more focus on the concept, as is expressed by nouns.

例：你怎么看？How do you think? What do you think?

2.semantic motivation 语义理据

It refers to the mental associations of the conceptual meaning of a word. It explains the connection between the literal meaning and figurative meaning of a word. It can be achieved through rhetorical devices such as metaphor, hyperbole, analogy, metonymy and image.

例：metaphor: 喇叭花，纸老虎，鹅卵石

3.lexical gap 词汇空缺

Lexical gap refers to the fact that no corresponding lexical items of the source language can be found in the target language. There are several causes for such gaps: different motivations behind nomenclature, different ways of grouping things, differences among synonyms, and things unique to a culture, etc.

例：billions, millions

4.parataxis 意合

It means that the connections between sentences depend on the meanings of the languages or their logical relationship. Compared with English, Chinese is more paratactic because of its perceptional thing and holistic comprehension.

例：留得青山在，不怕没柴烧。

As long as the green mountains are there, one should not worry about firewood.

In Chinese, there is no word to join the two clauses, but their English translations must have

conjunctions.

5.Conceptual metaphor 概念隐喻

Conceptual metaphor is defined as understanding one conceptual domain called a target domain in terms of another conceptual domain called a source domain.

for example, in the sentence “Life is a journey.”, “life” is the target domain while “journey” is the source domain.

6.phonographic language 表音文字

It means that its letters only stand for sounds. Only a combination of sounds can represent a meaning. English is a phonographic language, whose letters do not represent any meaning, whereas Chinese is a morpheme language or an ideographic language, who characters represent particular meanings.

7.intonation 语调

It refers to the pitch pattern changes in connected speech. It mainly concerns the syntactic level and is used to distinguish questions from statements. At the syntactic level, English is an intonation language while Chinese is a contour tone language.

8.lexicalization 词汇化

It refers to a word formation process of adding words, set phrases, or word patterns to a language. It is the realization of a meaning in a single word or morpheme rather than in a grammatical construction.

9.nominalization 名词化

The process of forming a noun or noun phrases from a clause or a verb. This phenomenon shows the objectivity and conciseness of English language.