wn obligatory categories, which differ from language to
language. For instance, in English nouns have both their singular and plural form and
verbs have both their past and present tense, which it is not the same with nouns and
verbs in Chinese. Also in English, ‘cousin’ means ‘child of one’s uncle or aunt’,
so it does not make it clear that whether this ‘cousin’ is male or female, whether
he/she is elder or younger than the speaker, whether he/she has the consanguinity with
the speaker’s father or mother. However, in China, when we call somebody ‘堂兄’
‘堂妹’ ‘表姐’ ‘表弟’, we point out all these characteristics. Thus problems occur
in translation. But as long as such obligatory categories are not just as important, we
can make a brief translation. Take ‘早上好，表妹’ for example, a brief translation
‘Good morning, cousin.’ is enough. Otherwise we should say ‘Good morning, my
female-cousin-on-mother’s-or-paternal-aunt’s-side-younger-than-myself’. And in
Chinese as well as in Russian, ‘嫁’ and ‘娶’ is not the same thing, while in
English ‘marry’ means both. So the time we need to translate ‘嫁’ or ‘娶’ into
English, ‘marry’ is enough.
Besides, we should avoid a tendency – to translate a verb into a verb, an adjective
into an adjective, a noun phrase into a noun phrase, etc.. It is because different
language has different ways of expression. In Chinese, we say ‘真讨厌’ (an adjective
phrase), while in English a noun phrase ‘What a nuisance’ is more often heard than
an adjective phrase ‘How annoying’. French people say ‘Quelle merveille!’ (a noun
phrase), while the English say ‘How marvelous!’ rather than ‘What marvel!’. A
Chinese adjective phrase ‘真好玩’ should be translated into English as a noun phrase
‘What fun’, for the adjective phrase ‘How funny’ means ‘ridiculous’. Since the
root of ‘可人’ is ‘人’(person), it may seem all right to translate it into English
as ‘personable’, while the appropriate version should be ‘lovable’.
Sometimes, not only should a translator avoid making a verb-to-verb or a noun-to-noun
translation, he should even avoid using the same hierarchical structure. Under such
circumstances, we should make a change to its language structure. Let’s think about how
to translate a very popular Chinese saying ‘好是好’ into English? Maybe someone will put
it like this ‘(As for being) good, (it) is good.’. Unfortunately, this English version is
too limited to the Chinese linguistic structure, so it can’t translate out the hidden
meaning successfully. Then how to translate out its original meaning? To make a change to
its Chinese linguistic structure is a good means. We can say ‘It’s good, but …’ And
still to this sentence, I think we can make a good use of intonation. So the best and the
most vivid translation should be ‘It’s good, but …’.
Third, different classifications in different cultures.
Different culture has different means to classify things, either in the nature of things
or in the fields of numerical expressions, weights and measure, etc.. In Chinese,
although the Pingying ‘ta’ has three written forms as ‘他’ 、‘她’and‘它’, they
pronounced the same; while in English, ‘he’、‘she’ and ‘it’ are totally different
either in the written form or in the pronunciation. So the Pingying ‘ta’ has the
different nature with either ‘he’, ‘she’ or ‘it’. Also, the Chinese character ‘桌’
means both the ‘table’ and ‘desk’ in English, and ‘虾’ means both ‘prawn’ and
‘lobster’. Even ‘车’does not only mean ‘vehicle’. So when translating, we should
choose a most appropriate match to these words. For instance, ‘青’ has a wide range
of meanings in Chinese. And the English version for ‘青衣’ should be ‘black dress’
while ‘青天’ be ‘blue sky’. However, sometimes it is impossible for us to do so.
In England, ‘teenager’ is directed to the young men at the age of between eleven
and nineteen; while in Chinese, there is not a corresponding word representing such an
age group. In US, they use ‘feet’ and ‘inches’ to measure human’s height, and they
use ‘pounds’ to measure human’s weight; while in China, the measurements we have are
the metric system as ‘meters’, ‘centimeters’, and ‘kilograms’. In British, they
have their weights and measures as ‘acre’, ‘fathenheit’, ‘pints’, ‘gallons’,
‘drams’, ‘stone’, ‘grains’, ‘ounces’, ‘miles’, ‘bushels’, ‘pence’, etc.
However, we don’t employ these systems of unit in China and we don’t have the
ready-made words at hand. And all these arise problems whil
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