Beyond phonetic transfer

Transliteration has been widely practiced in the translation of cultural terms, yet it is commonly seen as mere phonetic transfer, neglecting its diverse semiotic potentials. Drawing from Peircean Semiotics, this paper reframes transliteration as a combination of iconic transference, indexical interpretation and symbolic interaction. It then moves to reclassify transliteration strategies of cultural terms with examples taken from the termbase of Key Concepts in Chinese Thought and Culture , a Chinese national term translation project. Three major transliteration strategies are then presented, namely iconic transliteration, indexical transliteration and conventional transliteration, each targeting at different term functions. A three-step transliteration process is then proposed to facilitate cultural terminology translation practice. It hopes to deepen our understanding of transliteration in the translation of cultural terms, which may open new spaces for term translation studies.