翻译中中式英语的现象.ppt

 Chinglish in Chinese-English Translation Mother-tongue Interference One cause of Chinglish, apparently, is the linguistic interference of ones mother tongue, which always poses an obstacle to his or her successful learning of foreign languages. When adult native speakers of Chinese learn English, they tend to lose sign of the striking differences between the two languages and write in English what they would in Chinese. As a result, Chinglish, an awkward mixture in which ideas conceived in Chinese are ungrammatically or unidiomatically expressed in English, runs riot in Chinese-English translation. The following examples, though simple, serve to illustrate the negative effect of the mother tongue well. 1.Chinglish Phrases 密码*secret code (cf. password) 口水*mouth water (cf. saliva) 手机*hand phone (cf. mobile phone) 救火*to save a fire (cf. to fight a fire) 洗牌*to wash the playing cards (cf. to shuffle the playing cards) 隐形眼镜*invisible glasses (cf. contact lenses) 课堂测验*classroom exam (cf. pop-quiz) 流动资金*circulating funds (cf. working capital) 拳头产品*fist product (cf. knockout product) 2.Chinglish Sentences (1)那位科学家已经年迈，但身体健康。 *The scientist is growing old, but his body is healthy. The scientist is growing old, but he is healthy. (Instead of His body is healthy, the natural English expression for身体健康is“ He is healthy, He is in good health or His health is good. It is noteworthy that the word body“ has several meanings in English and one of them is dead body) (2)今天早晨我发生一件怪事。 *I happened a strange thing this morning. A strange thing happened to me this morning. (As far as the expression 发生某事 is concerned, while something serves as the English subject, the Chinese sentence finds its subject in somebody.) (3)天正在下雨。 *The sky is raining. It is raining. (While mentioning weather conditions, native speakers of English tend to begin with the pronoun it ,e.g. It is rather windy today.) (4)新学期已经过去一个月了。 *Our new term has passed o