The semiotics of translation at the lexical level

Based on the scenarios regarding conceptual equivalence postulated by Felber (1984) and Arntz (1993), I will attempt to characterize the semiotic processes in­

volved in translation at the lexical level as follows.

3.1 Complete translation

The signifier/sign sun in English and the signifier taiyang in Chinese refer to the same psychological image (in de Saussure terms) or the same referent (in semiotic terms). More often than not, complete translation can be achieved in the case of physical entities, such as body parts and natural phenomena. Of course, sun and taiyang may bear different associative meanings, or connotation, as may dog and gou.

We are basically concerned with conceptual meaning here not least because associa­

tive meaning is largely a matter of subjective interpretation. As such, associative meaning may better be understood as ‘interpretative meaning’. One may even say

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that comparatively, conceptual meaning is social, more generally agreed upon and associative meaning is individual, more restricted and subject to the values and expe­

rience of the user or a particular group of users.

3.2 Cultural adaptation (or approximational translation)

This characterization may be understood in terms of „conceptual overlapping".

For instance, graduation dinner is generally regarded as an „equivalent" of xiesiyan, which literally means ‘thank teacher meal’. On closer examination, we can readily dis­

cover the two terms and concepts are at best partially equivalent to each other, that they differ in many other aspects. Jiulou and restaurant are another example. For one thing, customers rarely, if never, play mahjong at a restaurant in the average English culture. Cultural adaptation is by far the most common technique of translation as it makes the best use of expressions and concepts already existing in the target-lan­

guage culture, thus rendering the translation product smooth and idiomatic.

Newmark’s communicative approach (1988) and Nida’ dynamic equivalence (1982, among others) may be seen as a manifestation of cultural adaptation. But nei­

ther of the two translation scholars has clearly identified the semiotic process involved in cultural adaptation.

Although cultural adaptation as a translation approach does not attempt to alter the conceptual order of the target-language culture, the meaning of the expressions adopted in the translation will be virtually modified or expanded when they are used to refer to a different but related concept from a different language and culture. In this semiotic process, translation provides a venue for the interaction between differ­

ent cultures.

3.3 Cultural transplant (or creative translation)

There are times when we have to abandon cultural adaptation, whether there is conceptual overlapping or a complete absence of conceptual equivalence, because there are time when there is a need to introduce a concept represented by a signifier in Language A, lock, stock and barrel, into the target-language culture. This situation usually occurs with terms and concepts related to a technical or specialized field of human activities, such as philosophy and law. Let us consider again the case of Mareva injunction. There is no word in Chinese yet that conveys exactly the same conceptual entity, or equally, there is no such concept as ‘Mareva injunction’ in Chinese law (i.e.

common law in Chinese). Even if there were a partially equivalent term in Chinese, it would be dangerous to resort to cultural adaptation, for the partially equivalent term may be operating in a different legal system, for instance, the one in China or the one in Taiwan. Under these circumstances, we have to create, coin a new word or explicitly modify the meaning of an existing word for the concept. The semantic modification here differs from the semantic modification in cultural adaptation in the way that the former is a deliberate attempt to change and the latter is more or less a corollary. Roebuck and Sin (1993: 194) offer a similar conclusion:

Identity in meaning is something which we have to create for a particular pur­

pose, not something that is already there before it is created. If we try to look

Section 2. LSP and Translation

for a close equivalent in Chinese to ‘equity’ in English, we shall be looking for the impossible, because there is no such thing as equity in Chinese law... We have to coin a new Chinese term and deposit in it the meaning of equity by giving an explanation. The new term has acquired its meaning by its being linked to ‘equity’, by having the common law as its reference scheme.

In the case of Mareva injunction, we can translate it through the partial applica­

tion of transliteration (phonetic translation) into maleiwajinzhiling, where maleiwa is the transliterated part and jinzhiling is an existing lexeme in Chinese, which means an injunction. To facilitate the establishment of the representational or signifying link, we have to, at the same time, furnish the translated term with an explanation or defi­

nition, similar to the English definition. In contradistinction to cultural adaptation, we are not only translating a term but also at the same time transplanting a new con­

cept. In creative translation, the conceptual order of a particular aspect of the target- language culture will be deliberately altered.

4. Conclusion

There is no insurmountable difficulty in translating English common-law terms into Chinese. If empirical evidence is anything to go by, in the Concise English-Chi- nese Law Dictionary published by the Commercial Press in 1991, more than 45.000 English legal terms have been translated into Chinese (1991: foreword). According to the 1994 annual report of the Legal Department of Hong Kong, a Bilingual Laws Information System has been set up, whose database includes an expanding glossary of the Chinese character equivalents of English words and expressions used in legis­

lation’ (1994: 13). All that needs and remains to be done is to establish the signifying or representational link between the terms and the concepts. And that link is best established by the frequent use of the Chinese terms in signifying the concepts they are associated with.

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Contrastive Analysis ofTextual