The Variation of Euphemistic Translation of “Death” of Border Town

Abstract

Euphemisms, as a common linguistic, social and cultural phenomenon in the process of human development, have attracted a lot of the academic community’s attention. Due to the differences in social and cultural aspects between countries and nations, English and Chinese differ in their expressions and vocabulary choices, and the differences are mainly seen in the fact that English uses more euphemisms than Chinese, but Chinese is not devoid of euphemistic ways of presentation. With English and Chinese both having a large number of euphemisms, they have some similarities and differences, and current research on euphemisms tends to focus on the comparative study of different languages or dialects. The purpose of this paper is to compare the euphemisms of “death” in the two English translation versions of Border Town, YANG Xianyi’s translation (translated by an author who speaks English as a second language) and Jeffrey’s translation (translated by a native English speaker), to view the characteristics of the two translators through the lens of the “death” translation, and thus provide some insights for translators in how to do good translations.