III 2.HOW TO TRANSLATE “LONG”
As we can see from the above comparison research, although “long” and “dragon” are both the magical and mystical, mythological animals in Chinese and western culture, the background of history, the development of the society’s well as the way of thinking, cause the differences between them. When the character “long” appears in the words and expressions, we always refer it to the analogical meanings, which are formed by the profound history of China. I summon up the main meanings as followed:
1) Something belongs to the emperor or related to the imperial in ancient China.
2) As powerful and strong and active as the “long” in traditional Chinese Mythology.
3) Talented people, “wo hu cang long[1]”, for example.
4) Shape or structure or strength have similarity with the Chinese mythology figure “long”
5) It has something related to China. When people refer to “long”, especially in Asia, this character can easily cause people to connect this powerful image to China, which has a history of 5000 years.
6) The leading, the top, the first
So when we want to translate the word no matter from Chinese to English, or from English to Chinese, cultural information gap is the most important and essential factor for consideration. Also this is the most difficult step we have to follow. As we do the translation work, we can paraphrase the sentence or phrases according to its original meaning, instead of using “dragon” and translates them word-by-word. This is the indirect way of translation ---the translation of meanings. Here are some of the common examples, which we usually use in our daily communication.
III 2.1 “LONG DE CHUAN REN” 5
So according to the aforementioned, when we want to translate the word “long de chuan ren” into English, undoubtedly we can not put it into “the successor of the dragon” in that the “dragon” was a evil image in western people’s mind. At the very beginning, I try to put it simply into “the Chinese people”, but that just point out the basic meaning of this word. As far as I am concerned, “the decedents of Chinese traditional figure ‘long’ ”, or “Descendants of long (metaphor for the Chinese nation) “ would be better.
Article From: http://blog.sina.com.cn/u/3f6e88c40100047c www.loong.cn
