AN ANALYSIS OF CHINESE CLASSIFIERS USED IN A TRANSLATION TASK

This paper investigated the use of Chinese classifiers used in a translation task done by 125 university students. These subjects were asked to translate the article 'Horse or Fish: sea horse' from English into Chinese. The frequency and percentage of the use of classifiers to denote the four noun phrases (this creature, a horse, a fish, and the sea horse) in the text were calculated. It was found that there was an overwhelming omission of using classifiers for these four noun phrases. The subjects seemed to carefully apply suitable classifiers for these four noun phrases. For example, ge, zhong for this creature; pi or zhi for a horse; tiao, zhi, and zhong for a fish, and zero classifier for the sea horse. It is assumed that these subjects had the clear concept of how to categorize the four animals in this text and applied conventionalized classifiers for denoting them. Besides, it can be inferred, from their application of the classifiers, that they are aware of the generic use of the definite/indefinite article in English. The result of this paper may shed some light on the teaching of translating English articles into Chinese classifiers.