Thematic progression in English–Chinese translation of argumentative classics: a quantitative study of Francis Bacon's ‘Of Studies’ and its 11 Chinese translations
2013; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 21; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/0907676x.2011.615940
ISSN1747-6623
Autores Tópico(s)Language, Metaphor, and Cognition
ResumoAbstract Abstract By way of a quantitative study of the patterns of thematic progression of the argumentative essay 'Of Studies' and its 11 Chinese translations, we attempt to demonstrate the degree of relevance of these patterns to translation studies. Our study reveals that these patterns and their shifts in translation display certain regularity in their frequency and density, which in turn may shed light on many issues in the English–Chinese translation of argumentative classics, such as the constitution of the 'interlingua' and the degree of correspondence between the source text and the target text(s). Keywords: themethematic progressionEnglish–Chinesetranslation'Of Studies' Acknowledgements The authors wish to acknowledge their gratitude to the following scholars for their help. They are Prof. Yongsheng Zhu, from Fudan University, China, Prof. Chuanbin Ni, from Nanjing Normal University, China, and Jingjing Yan, from the Ohio State University, USA. Thanks also go to the referees, whose advice has facilitated the revising process. Notes 1. There are at least three types of process-oriented researches that are influential in modern translation studies. The first one is the hermeneutic perspective of dividing translation process either into four stages (Steiner's hermeneutic motion) or into two phases (following Gadamer's fusion of horizons). The second is Think Aloud Protocol (TAP), a psychological perspective aimed at the workings of the human brain in translation. The third is the discourse-based linguistic perspective that treats 'translation as a process' (Hatim & Mason, 1990, p. 3) and the translated text as 'evidence of a transaction, a means of retracing the pathways of the translator's decision-making procedures' (Hatim & Mason, 1990, p. 4). This paper follows the third perspective. 2. The relevant discussions about other language pairs are also rare. We can only find Goutsos (1999 Goutsos, D. 1999. Translation in bilingual lexicography: Editing a new English-Greek dictionary. Babel, 45: 107–126. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]), about English–Greek translation, Rogers (2006 Rogers, M. 2006. Structuring information in English: A specialist translation perspective on sentence beginnings. The Translator, 12: 29–64. [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]), about German–English translation, and Kim (2007 Kim, M. 2007. Using systemic functional text analysis for translator education: An illustration with a focus on textual meaning. The Interpreter and Translator Trainer, 1: 223–246. [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]), about English–Korean translation. 3. 'Of Studies' and its 11 Chinese translations, used here for analysis, are all quoted from Feng (2002 Feng, Q.H. 2002. A practical course on translation, 1st ed., Shanghai: Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press. [Google Scholar], pp. 390–413). We choose these 11 versions because they are typical translations of the essay in China for the following reasons. First, their dates of original publication spread over all the major stages of the translation history of the essay. The surveys by L.C. Yu (1987 Yu, L.C. 1987. Bacon and his philosophy, Beijing: People's Press. [Google Scholar], pp. 434–485) and H. Wang (2004 Wang , H. 2004 . On the translation and reception of Francis Bacon's The Essays in China (Unpublished master's thesis) . Sichuan University , Chengdu , , China . [Google Scholar], pp. 17–27) show that T.T. Shui's version (1939/1950) belongs in the period from 1930s to 1950s, Z.L. Wang's (1961) in the period from 1960s to 1970s, X. He's (1983), J. Gao's (1983), M.L. Cao's (1997), and the rest in the period from 1980s to the present. Second, most of these 11 versions have been continuously reprinted and are still widely read in today's China. Third, the feasibility of placing these 11 versions in the same comparative framework is reinforced in the same treatment by scholars such as Zhang (2007 Zhang, M.J. 2007. An introduction to comparative translation, Wuhan: Hubei Education Press. [Google Scholar], pp. 130–136) and C.B. Li (2008 Li , C.B. 2008 . A study of Wang Zuoliang's translation style (Unpublished doctoral dissertation) . Shanghai International Studies University, Shanghai , China . [Google Scholar], pp. 107–114). In our analysis, we emphasize nothing but objective description of these translations. In other words, their various degrees of popularity and quality are not our immediate concern. 4. Topic refers to the object discussed in a discourse. Boasting organizational dynamicity, it may appear not only on the level of a clause (often equivalent to a theme in this case) but also in a group of clauses or a bigger unit of discourse – like 'a common factor in mathematics' (Peng, 2000 Peng, X.W. 2000. A comprehensive comparison between English and Chinese texts, Shanghai: Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press. [Google Scholar], pp. 46–47). For the relationship between theme, topic, and subject, see Y.X. Li's exemplary discussion of 'the subject theme' and 'the topic theme' (Y.X. Li, 2002 Li, Y.X. 2002. An application of the concept of theme in the study of the translation between English and Chinese. Foreign Languages and Their Teaching, 160: 19–22. [Google Scholar]). 5. Here, the concept of 'clause' is used in its Hallidayan sense. It is different from that used in traditional English grammar. To avoid confusion, we use 'clausal structure' for the traditional sense of 'clause' in this paper. 6. This does not apply to an embedded attributive clausal structure within a sentence (either front- or end-positioned) in English, since we have already considered (non)restrictive attributive clausal structures as independent clauses for analysis. But it is understandably difficult to deal with the middle-positioned ones. In 'Of Studies', we only have end-positioned attributive clausal structures. Those middle-positioned ones, according the theoretical framework adopted in this paper, may be taken as part of the rheme of the main clause. For examples of such structures, see Quirk, Greenbaum, Leech and Svartvik (1985 Quirk, R., Greenbaum, S., Leech, G. and Svartvik, J. 1985. A comprehensive grammar of the English language, 1st ed., Harlow: Pearson Longman. [Google Scholar], pp. 120, 990, 1035–1040, 1299–1300). 7. Thus in analyzing cases such as the first four clauses in Tables 3 and 5, we only pick out a T2R1 type from the first two clauses, while ignoring the parallel relationship between T2, T3 and T4 in the same context of the first four clauses. This exclusion, if otherwise included, might greatly complicate the present analysis. 8. For the Latin quotations of 'Abeunt studia in mores' and 'cymini sectores', we use in our analysis their English translations 'Studies become habits' and 'splitters of hair'. 9. In Figure 1, ch1, ch2 … ch11 refer to the 11 Chinese versions, numbered in the same way as in Table 6.
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