A Contrastive Analysis of Legend of Zhen Huan and Empress in the Palace on Impact of Differences Between Chinese and Western Thinking Mode on Translation

Yuehong Wei,Yuanyuan Du

doi:10.7575/aiac.ijclts.v.7n.2p.62

Abstract

Translation is not only a language activity, but also a conceptual work. The differences between Chinese and western thinking modes lead to different expressions. It is the key point to realize the differences between Chinese and western thinking modes and then learn to transform them appropriately in translation. This paper takes Legend of Zhen Huan and Empress in the Palace as an example to explore the impact of differences between Chinese and Western thinking modes on translation. The embodiment of thinking modes was analyzed from five aspects, which are ethical and cognitive thinking modes, comprehension and rationality thinking modes, fuzzy and precise thinking modes, subjective and objective thinking modes as well as inductive and deductive thinking modes. The comparison between the above five aspects illustrates the

Highlights

Legend of Zhen Huan aroused great response after its first broadcast in China in 2011, and quickly swept the whole country, even abroad like Japan, South Korea and Southeast Asia
The differences between Chinese and western thinking modes lead to different expressions
This paper takes Legend of Zhen Huan and Empress in the Palace as an example to explore the impact of differences between Chinese and Western thinking modes on translation

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Legend of Zhen Huan aroused great response after its first broadcast in China in 2011, and quickly swept the whole country, even abroad like Japan, South Korea and Southeast Asia. Yao believed that the reason why the translated version of Empress in the Palace was not universally accepted was, to a large extent, that there were cultural differences between China and the United States. In order to explore the language characteristics and its transformation, the mode of thinking which is closely related to language should be seriously take into con- sideration.(Lian Shuneng, 2010) This paper takes the Chinese and American versions of Legend of Zhen Huan and Empress in the Palace as examples to reveal the differences between Chi- nese and English thinking modes and their impacts on transla- tion for the purpose of exploring effective ways of translation and improving translation quality. The different characteristics between the lines of two versions as well as the ineffective translation such as the failure in transformation of the complicated appellation and the poetic lines are all good examples to illustrate the strong relationship between language and thinking mode

METHODOLOGY

CONCLUSION