Equivalent varieties for culture-specific words in Chinese-English dictionaries
-
Qian LI
and
Yun XIA
Abstract
Given the popularity of Chinese culture among learners of Chinese as a Foreign language (CFL), a quality bilingual dictionary is of significance to provide cultural information for language activities. The present study collects a group of typical Chinese culture-specific words (CSWs) and examines the adoption of different equivalent varieties in four Chinese-English dictionaries when dealing with those CSWs. It shows that firstly, while borrowing turns out to be the least used way in the bilingual dictionaries, a combination of equivalents (either translational or explanatory) plus explanation is the major means adopted by Chinese bilingual lexicographers. Secondly, as compared to the dictionaries for general purposes, those intended for CFL learners prefer to include more CSWs and provide a larger amount of encyclopedic explanation for user’s orientation. Finally, the inappropriateness of some translational or explanatory equivalents suggests the necessity for a close scrutiny of various aspects in the process of equivalent identification, including sense discrimination between different TL words, context information of the potential equivalents, and cultural connotation of each constituent part of a TL equivalent. It is hoped that these findings may contribute to the improvement of Chinese-English learner’s dictionaries in the future.
© 2020 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Titelei
- Thematic Part : Metalexicography, dictionaries and culture
- Metalexicography, dictionaries and culture
- Dictionary culture in African language communities: research, development, challenges and prospects
- How to select and present cultural data: a challenge to lexicography
- Enhancing the role of culture-specific constructs in Chinese (-English) dictionaries for international learners
- The treatment of Taoist terms in Chinese-English dictionaries: a study based on Frame Semantics
- The treatment of cultural words in Chinese foreign dictionaries--a case study on “粽子”
- Equivalent varieties for culture-specific words in Chinese-English dictionaries
- Wörterbücher mit Slowenisch. Historische, kulturelle und sprachpolitische Aspekte
- The presentation of information in bilingual online dictionaries: The case of culture-specific phraseological units
- Kulturell geprägte Wörter zwischen sprachlicher Äquivalenz und kultureller Kompetenz. Am Beispiel deutsch-italienischer Wörterbücher
- Boys will be boys: an example of biased and exclusive usage
- Language and ecology of culture
- A new wave of Shakespeare lexicography (with special reference to LSP dictionaries)
- Non-thematic Part
- A window to the future: Proposal for a lexicography-assisted writing assistant
- Lexikographische Konzeption und kulturgeschichtliche Erkenntnis im digitalen Zeitalter
- The Deipnosophists and Dr Johnson
- Lexicography in Higher Education
- Lexicography in the times of the Covid: EMLex survival kit
Articles in the same Issue
- Titelei
- Thematic Part : Metalexicography, dictionaries and culture
- Metalexicography, dictionaries and culture
- Dictionary culture in African language communities: research, development, challenges and prospects
- How to select and present cultural data: a challenge to lexicography
- Enhancing the role of culture-specific constructs in Chinese (-English) dictionaries for international learners
- The treatment of Taoist terms in Chinese-English dictionaries: a study based on Frame Semantics
- The treatment of cultural words in Chinese foreign dictionaries--a case study on “粽子”
- Equivalent varieties for culture-specific words in Chinese-English dictionaries
- Wörterbücher mit Slowenisch. Historische, kulturelle und sprachpolitische Aspekte
- The presentation of information in bilingual online dictionaries: The case of culture-specific phraseological units
- Kulturell geprägte Wörter zwischen sprachlicher Äquivalenz und kultureller Kompetenz. Am Beispiel deutsch-italienischer Wörterbücher
- Boys will be boys: an example of biased and exclusive usage
- Language and ecology of culture
- A new wave of Shakespeare lexicography (with special reference to LSP dictionaries)
- Non-thematic Part
- A window to the future: Proposal for a lexicography-assisted writing assistant
- Lexikographische Konzeption und kulturgeschichtliche Erkenntnis im digitalen Zeitalter
- The Deipnosophists and Dr Johnson
- Lexicography in Higher Education
- Lexicography in the times of the Covid: EMLex survival kit
