Стратегии перевода национально-ориентированных единиц с русского языка на китайский (на примере фильма "Он - дракон")

1. INTRODUCTION

Each national culture has its own unique features, which are reflected in the language. The language acts as a cultural code carrier and a tool for communication. There are many differences between Russia and China in spiritual culture, historical experience, worldview and other aspects, which present a particular difficulty in translation practice. Vocabulary, as the central part of the language, is naturally most influenced by the material and spiritual culture of the nation; thus it can be affirmed that the vocabulary of a language could serve a material for exploring the features of a national culture.

Non-equivalent vocabulary (hereinafter abbreviated as NEV) in the language system directly and objectively reflects the specific feature of a country culture, and also “does not have regular correspondences in the target language” (1, p.157). The term NEV also includes such a concept as “nationally-biased units”. Objects characteristic of the life (daily routine, culture, social and historical development) of one nation and alien to another nation are denoted as nationally-biased units designated by words (and phrases), which being the carriers of national and/or historical values, as a rule, do not have exact matches (equivalents) in other languages, and, therefore, cannot be translated “on a general basis”, and require a special approach (2, p.47).

Thus, the main difficulties in conveying and revealing the meaning of a nationally-biased word in the target language is the lack of an appropriate analogue which could convey the meaning of a particular object, as well as the impossibility to fully convey its cultural and national characteristics. Moreover, the translator's task, when he is faced with such situation, is to be able to select correct translation strategies and transformations.

Yu.V. Artemieva and Yu.V.Yavari among the domestic scientists are in particular engaged in translation of  nationally-biased units; they emphasize “the insufficient means of conveying such units as compared to the full range available in the translation of literary works"(3,p.101), since it is not often possible to supplement the translation with explanations in footnotes or in `comments`.