TITLE:
Exploring the Non-Symmetry of Word Derivation in Chinese-English Translation—“Wenming” for “Civilization”
AUTHORS:
Fei Deng, Li Zhang, Xu Wen
KEYWORDS:
Word Derivation, Translation, Civilization, Wenming, Difference, Compatible
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Modern Linguistics,
Vol.4 No.3,
August
13,
2014
ABSTRACT:
The
western thoughts have brought many new ideas to China in 19th century, and influenced the words’ meanings of Chinese words system. The
Chinese-English translated terms and their different derivations bridge the gap
between different cultures. The scholar translated English word “civilization”
into Chinese word “wenming”. “Wenming” is derived from “wen” and “ming”. “Wen”
means “People feel and experience the nature by heart, and then painting and
describing things, at last, one can obtain knowledge through this process”. “Ming”
means “based on wen, people are conducted to the correct direction, and become
enlightened and civilized”. “Civilization” is derived from “civil”. And “civil”,
“civis”, “civitas” and “civilitas” have the same word origin. The radical factors
of the meaning of the word “civilization” are “make” and “development”. They
focused on the “town” and “city”, namely, the process of cumulating wealth and
remolding the nature through human being intervening in nature actively. The
different word derivations between “wenming” and “civilization” disclose the
differences of the location and culture when the modern thought of civilization
was pervading the whole world. At the same time, with the semantic developing
of “wenming”, it has the similar concept connotation with “civilization”, so it
displays the compatible property and makes it possible for translation between
two language units.