2Translation of Nouns.doc

Translation of Nouns Generalization A noun isa word that is the name ofa person, place, thing, quality, action, etc. and it can be used as the subject or object of a verb or the object ofa preposition. munication, the noun is the basic element to express a concept. Different peoples have different symbols to express concepts and the relationship between the meaning and the symbol is arbitrary. Therefore the translation of nouns is of the first importance in munication. Nouns may be divided into two groups: proper nouns mon nouns. We will deal with some rules in handling the translation of nouns from English into Chinese. Translation of Proper Nouns An English proper noun isa name used for a single particular thing or person, and spelt with a capital letter. The translators in China usually follow two principles to deal with the English proper nouns: transliteration and semantic translation. They will be discussed in detail below. Transliteration: three rules 1) To follow the pronunciation of the owners of proper names England 英格兰 Deutsch 德意志 Paris 巴黎 Bangkok 曼谷 2) To use the standard pronunciation of the Chinese characters In other words, the translator should pick mon and simple ones and avoid rare and obsolete ones, use characters that will not be understood from the context, avoid the use of words in the derogatory sense, and shorten some ones by dropping one o