Questioning the primacy of linguistic factors in Chinese and Japanese loanword adaptation trends
汉语与日语借词策略与语言系统的相关性之释疑
Kevin Heffernan 和凯文
Abstract 摘要
In general, English loanwords borrowed into Chinese are translated while English loanwords borrowed into Japanese and are transliterated. Previous researchers claim unanimously that the difference in loanword adaptation strategy stems from internal linguistic differences between Chinese and Japanese. I argue against a linguistic explanation by demonstrating that historically both languages have shown periods when the opposite approach (i.e., transliteration for Chinese and translation for Japanese) was predominant. I instead claim that social factors are the primary determinants of adaptation choice: specifically, Chinese and Japanese translate loanwords from English during periods of social distance from the west, and transliterate during periods of social closeness to the west.
Keywords 关键词
Loanwords 借词 Translation 意译 Transliteration 音译 Japanese 日语 Sociolinguistics 社会语言学
Journal of Chinese Linguistics volume 39 (ISSN 0091-3723)
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