Naming Methods of Roads, Streets and Alleys from Chinese to English in the Cultural City of Changsha, China

Author: Zhou Yin, Wong Ling Yann (Universiti Putra Malaysia)
Speaker: Wong Ling Yann
Topic: Anthropological Linguistics
Session Type: General Session

Abstract

For the Chinese-English (C-E) translation of roads, streets and alleys in the famous cultural city of Changsha, the improper translation problems such as cultural misplacement, the same Chinese name but has more than one English naming. In this paper, methods of toponym of roads, streets and alleys in Changsha has been investigated. The overall goal is divided into three main objectives: 1) the Chinese and English toponym of roads, streets and alleys in Changsha will be investigated through field work and interview, 2) identify the translation problems in naming the roads, streets and alleys, and 3) the translation methods for naming the place affected by the factor of period. Fieldwork and library research of qualitative research methodology are used in collecting data. The library research will be employed in exploring the historic background of Changsha cultural city and place naming, and how cultural connotations can differ the hypernym of toponym, such as the translation of roads, streets and alleys can be differed from its geographical features. This study pays emphasis on the comparative study on similarities and differences among hypernym naming among China, United States and European countries. The theory of Blair and Tent (2021) is adopted to analyse the methods of naming roads, streets and alleys in Changsha cultural city. Due to the the high correlation between the evolution of society and the development of place-naming in Changsha cultural city, the analysis of the data is conducted from both diachronic and synchronic perspectives.

Keywords: toponym, cultural connotation, translation, naming, classification