神雕侠侣外传之郭襄,上古神器之二攻略,敌后武工队2013版
We will find this sentence is very simple, but can convey the Chinese meaning. Although these modifiers make the sentence very wonderful, if we translate it straight, it will appear Chinglish. 3.1.2 Word usage Chinese pay more attention to artistic conception, but English take important information. We can see it from the relationship between sentences and sentences. English like using many conjunctions to connect two sentences, but Chinese students using few. In addition, English students usually use many subordinate clause, absolute construction, prepositional phrase, gerund and so on in order to show the subordinate construction. Nevertheless, Chinese student always use coordinate construction and only have few kinds of ways to express.[10] For example, 陕西是中华民族文明的发源地之一，陕西是中国五千年文明的缩影，陕西是所有炎黄子孙的根基. We can translate like these: A: Shanxi is one of the birthplaces of the civilization of the Chinese nation; Shanxi is the miniature of the 5000 years civilization of china; Shanxi is also the root of all people of Chinese descent. B: Shanxi is one of the birthplaces of the civilization of the Chinese nation, the miniature of the 5000 years civilization of china and is also the root of all Chinese descendents. In sentence A three parallel structures and no relative words are used, Chinese student are accustomed to the sentence, but English student can not accept. They will translate the sentence like B. It is well known that Chinese thinking is according with the time sequence, the logic sequence. We always record things from first to last, from cause to result, from hypothesis to inference, but English keep the contrast thinking. For example, a Chinese sentence like this:我原先打算七月一号去香港旅行，后来不得不取消，这使我很扫兴。A Chinese student would translate it following the Chinese sequence. “I wanted to go to Hong Kong on July 1st at first; however, I had to cancel making me disappointment”. But we know English student will do it like this: It was keen disappointment that I had to cancel the visit I had intended to pay to Hong Kong on July 1st. It is obvious that English do it better and accord with the English usage. The difference of thinking process is the direct cause of Chinglish. When we listen to or look at English, the brain will understand the meaning without using the other language; when we want to express our idea, the brain will have the meaning at first, then we can express it using our mouth or our pen, the premise is we can not make use of the other language. To Chinese, when we hear or see a English word, there are two thinking ways through our brain, the first is straight thinking (English thinking), the process is English words, meaning, understanding; the other is the way of understanding following the Chinese translation (Chinese thinking), the process is English words, Chinese words, meaning, understanding. It is easy to see that Chinese thinking is more complex than English thinking; meantime, Chinese thinking is the key cause of Chinglish. 3.1.3 Different culture English and Chinese reflect their own culture. If we lack the knowledge of the English culture, we will laugh at by many foreigners. We always make mistake for lack the knowledge in English daily life. For example, when we meet our foreign teacher, we will ask him: Have you had your meal? Where are you going? How old are you? These question may because the misunderstanding by our foreign teacher, because inviting somebody to eat or asking their years old are the secret for foreign. If you ask like these, you will be thought you are impolite. Sometime we will make mistake like this: A: Your English is excellent. Really quite fluent. B: No, no. My English is very poor. This answer look nature in Chinese opinion, but English will think you are too humble. The right answer is Thank you. If we lack of the knowledge of English tradition culture, we will misunderstand idiom and analogy that used in English. For example, we always see these phrases appeared in our writing: as timid as a mouse. This is mistake. We should translate like these: chicken hearted or as timid as a hare. Another example, in China, if you want to say that people like drinking, or 牛饮，we always translate it to drink like an ox.[11] In fact, drink like a fish is right. Because England is islands country, fishing and navigation are very flourish, many words and expressions are connect with water, fish. But in China, people live by agriculture and many words have relationship with agriculture. In English, many words have origin from history culture, some from the Bible, some from Greek myths and legends, most of them from literary works; such as Odyssey, Quixotic, and Frankenstein and so on. We can see this example; the Time magazine had depicted the thing that Nixon has been to China. They say Nixon’s Odyssey to China. Many Chinese may be misunderstanding. But Odyssey is originate from Homer's epic, described Odysseus have a long and difficult journey after Troy was occupied by others. American wants to in this trope to express the friendly relationship between America and China after a long process. If we do not know of the history background of Odyssey, we can not understand its meaning very well. So learning a kind of language is equal to studying a kind of new culture. 3. 2 Mother language interference Although there are many factors that will cause Chinglish, from the forms of Chinglish above, we can see that linguistic interference is the main cause of Chinglish. And linguistic interference is mainly the negative influence of the mother tongue. 3.2.1 Language transfer Language transfer refers to speakers or writers applying knowledge from their native language to a second language. It is most commonly discussed in the context of English language learning and teaching, but it can occur in any situation when someone does not have a native-level command of a language, as when translating into a second language. It contains positive transfer and negative transfer. When the relevant unit or structure of both languages is the same, linguistic interference can result in correct language production called positive transfer — "correct" meaning in line with most native speakers' notions of acceptability. An example is the use of cognates. Note, however, that language interference is most often discussed as a source of errors known as negative transfer. Negative transfer occurs when speakers and writers transfer items and structures that are not the same in both languages. Within the theory of contrastive analysis (the systematic study of a pair of languages with a view to identifying their structural differences and similarities), the greater the differences between the two languages, the more negative transfer can be expected. Chinese and English have many differences, so Chinglish always appeared in the process of English learning.[12] Let us see two sentences. A: We must practice economy and reduce unnecessary expenditures. B: We must strive at the station on time and not be late. The two sentences not only contain positive form but also contain negative form. The behind of the sentence have the same meaning with the first part. But if we translate it to English we only choose one. The first sentence we should translate like this: We must practice economy. 3.2.2 Language comparison English language belongs to the Germanic languages branch of the Indo-European language family. We realize the relationship of grammar by morphological changes. Chinese belongs to Sino-Tibet language family and its grammar take important role in words and sequence. In English learning, we always like to compare English with the mother language. Some English words can translate the similar meaning but they are suit for different situation or they must connect with other words. We always make mistakes when we are using English words according with the Chinese meaning. For example: A: I want to ask you a problem. B: I want to ask you a question. ‘Problem’ and ‘question’ have the same Chinese meaning ‘问题’, but they have different implication. The first word inclined to do something when you meet difficulty. We can use the second word in more usual situation than the first word. In English vocabulary, we can find many such cases as same as the two words. In Chinese, we distinguish a sentence from the meaning. However, in English, grammar is very important. I can call it a sentence if it has subject, verbs and object. In this way, we can see many students using the comma from the beginning to the last of writing. For example: A: Zhang Ping is 20, he has a round face and big eyes, he is short and plumb, there is always a smile on his face. B: Zhang Ping is 20. He has a round face and big eyes. He is short and plumb. There is always a smile on his face. When we see the first sentence, most of student will agree with it. But when we see the second sentence we will realize our mistake. This is a usual problem in our writing. So when we are writing English, we should pay more attention to punctuation. 3. 3 Impersonal causes Besides these subjective causes for Chinglish, we must know of the impersonal causes. The impersonal causes include environment, purpose of learning, English teaching and so on. Because of the open policy, we found English become more and more important in business and political fields. In College Entrance Examination and postgraduate examinations, English is the compulsory subjects. We not only learn English in middle school, but also in primary school from 2001. In order to learn English well, many students go to crash course. So the materials comply with the crash course always have not good quality. |
