英汉拟声词对比翻译论文文献综述

Onomatopoeia is an important way of word-formation and a kind of rhetorical device. It uses the sound to reflect the sense, that is, the pronunciation of one word is the echo to the sense- the naming of a thing or action by a vocal imitation of the sound associated with it (as buzz, hiss) or the use of words whose sound suggests the sense. The creations of onomatopoeias are very simple and original. People just imitate the sounds of the animals or other things that can produce sounds. There are great numbers of onomatopoeias in each language. Onomatopoeias are important figures of speech that enrich the language. There exist the differences and similarities between English and Chinese onomatopoeias from aspects of phonetics, part of speech, syntactic function and semantics. The similarities mainly exist in partial similar phonetics, the diversities of part of speech and syntactic function, the transference of semantics and its usage. The differences mainly arise in phonetics, part of speech, semantics and syntactic function. So it’s necessary to pay attention to the same aspects and difference of onomatopoeias between Chinese and English and to make an in-depth research. At the same time, in the translation of onomatopoeia between Chinese and English, people have figured out many effective ways, however, they are very scattered. Many researches are made to explore the translation skills of onomatopoeia, which includes the transliteration and complement method.Hu Zhuanglin, in his famous book Linguistics, points out that words that sounds like the sounds they describe are called onomatopoeias, such as 叮咚，轰隆in Chinese. But in English, totally different words are used to describe the sound. For example, the dog barks bowwow in English but wang wang wang in Chinese. But there are some misunderstandings about the onomatopoeic effect. As a matter of fact, arbitrary and onomatopoeic effect may work at the same time. For example, Widdowson cites a line from Keats’Ode to a nightingale to illustrate: the murmurrous haunt of flies on summer eves. If you read it about, you may feel the connection between the sounds and the meaning. But the effect does not really result from the whispering sounds themselves, for you will have to know the meaning of the words murmurous, summer, before setting up such a connection. To test this, just think of using the similar sounding word murderous to substitute murmurous, and no connection whatsoever will be established between the sounds and the little noises of the flying flies. “It is only when you know the meaning that you infer that the form is appropriate.” This also applies to many cases of the so-called onomatopoeic words. Bloomfieild defined some onomatopoeia as secondary onomatopoeia, which refers to certain sounds and sound- sequences are associated with certain senses in an expressive relationship. In this form, the sounds evoke, not an acoustic experience, but a movement (dither, dodder, quiver, slink, slither, slouch, squirm, wriggle), or some physical or moral quality, usually unfavorable (gloom, grumpy, mawkish, slimy,sloppy, sloth, wry). Some of these onomatopoeic terms have certain elements in common; in Bloomfield’s words, there is “a system of initial and final root-forming morphemes, of vague signification”, with which the “intense, symbolic connotation”of such termsis associated. For example, the sounds /sn/ may express three types of experiences: “breath-noise”(sniff, snuff, snore, and snort), “quick separation or movement”(snip, snap, snatch), and “creeping”(snake, snail, sneak, snoop). Final group have similar functions: -are suggests “ big light or noise” as in blare, flare, glare, stare；-ump suggests “protuberance” as in bump, chump, clump, dump, hump, lump, mump” and “heavy fall” as in dump, crump, flump, plump, slump, thump. Another interesting feature of onomatopoeic patterns is that they often work by vowel alternation; by substituting one vowel for another one can express different noises.Guo Zhuzhang, in his A Practical Course in Translation between English and Chinese, points out that there are a lot of skills to translate onomatopoeia, which includes three ways. (a). Literal translation. If there are onomatopoeias in the original article, we should use onomatopoeias in the target languages when we translate them. For examples: 1)Two heavy guns went off in the woods－Brump! Brump! 两门重炮在森林里开始发射了－轰隆！轰隆！(2)Whee-ee-ee! Whee-ee-ee! The police whistles shrilled suddenly“鸣-！鸣-！”警笛突然响了。