Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Series editor
Defeng Li
Centre for Translation Studies, SOAS, University of London,
London, United Kingdom
Hybridity in Translated
Chinese
A Corpus Analytical Framework
Guangrong Dai
School of Humanities
Fujian University of Technology
Fuzhou
Fujian, China
v
vi General Editors Preface
education have also taken a data-based empirical approach and yielded interesting
and useful results.
As Translation Studies seeks further growth as an independent discipline and
recognition from outside the translation studies community, the interest to explore
beyond the Eurocentric translation traditions will continue to grow. So does the
need to adopt more data- and lab-based methods in the investigations of translation
and interpreting. It is therefore the intent of this Series to capture the newest
developments in these areas and promote research along these lines. The mono-
graphs or edited volumes in this Series will be selected either because of their focus
on non-European translation traditions or their application of innovative research
methods and models, or both.
We hope that translation teachers and researchers, as well as graduate students,
will use these books in order to get acquainted with new ideas and frontiers in
Translation Studies, carry out their own innovative projects and even contribute to
the Series with their pioneering research.
References
Cheung, M. 2006. An anthology of Chinese discourse on translation, volume one: From earliest
times to the Buddhist project. Manchester/Kinderhook: St. Jerome Publishing.
Hung, E., and J. Wakabayashi. 2005. Asian translation traditions. Manchester/Northampton:
St Jerome Publishing.
Foreword
In 2007, the Scottish poet, James McGonigal, published a slim book of poetry
called Passage/An Pasiaste, the working title of which, he once told me in an
interview, had been Poems written to be translated into an abandoned language.
His inspiration, he said, was the experience of reading English translations of Scots
Gaelic poetry alongside their (to him) unfathomable source texts; he wanted his
own original poems to capture the same kind of foreignness or strangeness: I
thought I would try to write poems out of that sort of consciousness, kind of in
translatorese language.1 The resulting poetic sequence was written in a form of
English that appeared indebted to Scots Gaelic, a language that, in fact, McGonigal
had little knowledge of.
The point of this story for the present volume is that many of us have an
instinctive awareness of the strangeness of translatorese, or translationese, that
foreignised variety of language that emerges from the process of translation. While
recognizable, however, the characteristics of translationese have always remained
difficult to pin down. Many translation scholars have attempted to follow Mona
Bakers approach to studying allegedly universal features of translated texts:
simplification, explicitation, normalization and levelling out of awkward features
in the original.2 While productive in terms of setting research agendas, Bakers
view of translationese focuses on certain cognitive strategies for coping with the
strangeness of the source text, and their linguistic outcomes, not directly on the
general linguistic characteristics of the target text as compared to the source.
Guangrong Dais study of hybridity in translated Chinese takes a different
approach to the study of translationese. His corpus analytical framework promises
to capture quantitatively those elements of translationese that qualitatively a reader
might recognize as distinguishing a translated text from a non-translated text. To do
this, he follows a small but influential group of scholars, such as the late Professor
Richard Xiao, who have drawn upon corpus linguistics to study normativity and
deviation in source texts and their translations. Their argument is the simple one
that the source texts exert an influence upon certain features of the translated texts,
vii
viii Foreword
and that influence can be seen in abnormal distributions of certain types of feature
in the translated texts.
To study the influence of the source language on the target language, corpus
Guangrong Dai employs three types of corpora: a corpus of source texts (in this
case, English and Chinese), a parallel corpus of translations of these source texts
into Chinese and English and a comparable corpus of English/Chinese texts,
controlled for genre, that give evidence for normative features in each language.
It will be no surprise to any reader who has decided to consult the present volume
that Guangrong Dais research makes substantial claims about the complex rela-
tionship of Chinese translationese both to English and to non-translated Chinese.
That is, texts that have been translated from Chinese to English systematically show
certain lexical, grammatical and discursive choices that are not necessarily
governed by Bakers translation universals, though some features no doubt relate
to these universals. Dais innovation is to focus on Chinese, a language that,
typologically, shares little with English, having a radically different grammar,
vocabulary and even orthographic system. Even so, linguistically, traces of
Englishness survive in the translated Chinese texts. Guangrong Dai draws upon
earlier, less systematic accounts of features of Chinese translationese, or Angli-
cized Chinese, and exploits his corpora in a series of detailed case studies to test
whether the translated texts display deviant distributions of these linguistic features,
when compared to non-translated texts in similar genres. What he arrives at is a
provisional, empirical profile of those linguistic features that characterize Chinese
texts translated from English. Though in some respects still provisional, this profile
results from the establishment of a sound methodology whose further application
will no doubt strengthen the claims made here. The corpus framework will bear
further fruit.
The research also raises other intriguing issues. The corpora used in the present
analysis largely consist of texts from two different time periods. There is the
provocative suggestion that the non-translated texts in the more recent period are,
in some ways, becoming more like the translated texts from the earlier period. If
this pattern is borne out, Guangrong Dai may well have identified a method for
eliciting quantitative evidence for language change, in this case triggered by greater
contact between English (or perhaps European languages) and Chinese over the
past century. There might be various reasons for such a shift in linguistic norms
over time: greater trade between East and West, the impact of mass education in
English language in China, increased electronic and digital communication, more
exposure to the English language in China or perhaps even the cumulative and
accelerating impact of translation itself. But whatever the cause, and however
different the languages remain, there is some evidence for the reconfiguration of
Chinese linguistic norms under the influence of English.
The research presented in this volume also usefully points towards possibilities
for the further study of linguistic hybridity. As noted, Guangrong Dai largely takes a
case study approach to the analysis of linguistic hybridity in texts translated from
English into Chinese; the features he studies have been suggested by earlier
scholars and cover different linguistic levels. One possible next step would perhaps
Foreword ix
be to stand back from the data in the three types of corpora and consider the
clustering of linguistic features within each corpus. The corpora would be mined
to generate information about significantly different features that are not pre-
identified; effectively they would generate their own points of reference for
comparison.
However, these developments are for another day. The fact that we can now
begin to explore such issues is a testimony to the innovative groundwork laid down
in the present volume, which offers a systematic and fascinating set of insights into
the ways in which Chinese texts translated from English are affected by the
gravitational pull of the source language at different linguistic levels.
John Corbett
University of Macau
Notes
The present research develops from my doctoral thesis which carried out at
University of Macau (UM), and many people offered me generous help in the
writing of this book. First, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my
supervisor, Professor John Corbett, for his generous help, constant supervision and
helpful academic suggestions. Thanks to him for giving me the opportunity to
develop my own ideas and the time to write them down. His kindness and patience
have always helped me navigate the periods of depression during my studies. He,
not only for his distinguished academic abilities but for his charming personality,
was, is and will be a role model of mine for life. My thanks also go to Professor
Zhang Meifang, for her help and encouragement during my research at UM.
Heartfelt thanks also go to Professor Richard Xiao for introducing me to the
world of corpus linguistics. A considerable part of the research presented here was
inspired by or developed in joint projects with him. I owe him thanks for his
generous assistance and constant encouragement throughout my PhD study. He
left us forever on January 2nd, 2016. May he rest in peace in Heaven.
Thanks to Professor Li Defeng for being my linguistic conscience and a good
friend at the same time. I give thanks for his insistence that I must see the words
behind the numbers. Empirical translation studies with the help of corpora must
take all aspects into considerations without ignoring the reasons which cause the
difference between original and translated languages. I owe special thanks to
Professor Lynne Bowker, University of Ottawa, Canada, and Professor Hu Kaibao,
Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China, for their comments and suggestions on my
thesis.
Thanks to Professor Wang Kefei from National Research Centre for Foreign
Language Education, Beijing Foreign Studies University, for his suggestions for my
research proposal and generous help as a Chief Editor for my book published by
Shanghai Jiaotong University Press in 2013.
Thanks to Professor Zhang Xu, the Dean of the School of Humanities of Fujian
University of Technology. His undeviating support and trust encouraged me all
the time.
xi
xii Acknowledgements
1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.1 General Background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.2 Specific Background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.3 Research Questions and Research Methodology . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.4 Organization and Significance of the Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
2 Hybridity in Translation Studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
2.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
2.2 Hybridity in Translation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
2.3 Occurrence of Hybridity in Translation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
2.4 Questions about Hybridity in Translated Languages . . . . . . . . . 16
2.5 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
3 Hybridity within CTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
3.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
3.2 Convergence between CL and CTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
3.3 Previous Research on Translated Language in CTS . . . . . . . . . 24
3.3.1 TU Hypotheses and Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
3.3.2 Challenges for TU Hypotheses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
3.3.3 CTS: Current Research on English-Chinese
Language Pair . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
3.4 Hybridisation in the Translation Norm Continuum . . . . . . . . . . 29
3.5 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
4 Hybridity in Anglicised Chinese . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
4.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
4.2 Background of Anglicisms in Modern Written Chinese . . . . . . . 40
xiii
xiv Contents
Appendices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201
Appendix 1 Books Sampled for MCCC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201
Appendix 2 CLAWS 8 Tagset for English . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207
Appendix 3 ICTCLAS2008 Part-of-speech Tagset . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215
List of Figures
xxiii
xxiv List of Abbreviations