Activity versus Descriptivity: A Stylometric Analysis of Two English Translations of Hongloumeng

This exploratory study examines how two different translators of Hongloumeng, i.e., David Hawkes (who translated the first 80 chapters, while John Minford translated the last 40 chapters) and Yang Xianyi (together with his wife Gladys Yang), used hedges and boosters to translate the fictional dialogues in this classic Chinese novel. As hedges and boosters are communicative strategies for modifying the illocutionary force of speech acts and showing the speaker’s attitude to audience, they are highly relevant to fictional dialogues which exhibit characters’ interactions and speech acts. Since translation involves rendering a textual message across two cultures, the translator’s interpretation of the original dialogues may alter characters’ speech acts and characterizations. Based on a corpus compiled by extracting the fictional dialogues from the two Hongloumeng translations, our study found that Hawkes used more hedges and boosters than the Yangs in translating the fictional dialogues. It is believed that the differences in translation styles can be attributed to the translators’ language backgrounds, translation practices and socio-cultural backgrounds. The findings also imply the differences in terms of the respective translator’s awareness and approach to characterization building in the translated novel.

This study combines quantitative statistics with qualitative analysis to describe the translation strategies, methods, and techniques of the expressions with Chinese characteristics, analyze the types of conceptual integration of translators using conceptual blending theory, and explore the principles of translators’ choice of translation strategies, methods and techniques. As a result of extracting and analyzing 325 expressions with Chinese characteristics from the Korean version of <Xi Jinping: The Governance of China>(Volume 1), the most commonly used conceptual integration type in the translation of the expressions with Chinese characteristics to Korean is projection of the input space 1 elements, and the next commonly used conceptual integration type is projection of the input space 2 elements. These results are in contrast to the research results of English translation studies, showing the effect of language and cultural background on translators’ translation activities. In addition, this study confirmed that different translation strategies and methods are selected due to weight imbalance when two input spaces are projected into the blend space, selection of translation strategies occurs in the projection of conceptual integration, selection of translation methods occurs in the blend space during the process of composition and completion, and selection of translation techniques occurs during the process of elaboration.

Metaphors often present a translation problem, as they can be culturally dependent and linguistically bound. A variety of methods for rendering metaphors have been proposed in prescriptive models of translation. The article provides a descriptive study of strategies employed for translating anger metaphors in Russian and Italian literary texts. The research is aimed at the qualitative and quantitative analyses of the ways conventional and novel metaphorical expressions are rendered in translation. A cognitive approach is used to explain factors that determine the choice of a particular translation strategy. The study employs corpus linguistics methods and has been conducted using the subcorpus of parallel Russian and Italian texts of the Russian National Corpus. Such methods help to reveal the relative frequency of various strategies in a particular type of discourse. As a result, eight methods for metaphor translation have been revealed, the most frequent being semantic translation, converting metaphor to sense and replacing the original image with a different image. It is shown that differences between the conceptual metaphor systems in the target and the source language have a significant effect on the choice of a translation strategy. However, this effect is not always straightforward, and a number of linguistic factors can have a greater influence on the translator’s choice.

The title of a movie is the first to attract the audience's attention. Poorly translated movie titles may result in a “low box office”, as translators in different countries have their styles and preferences in translating film titles, which might eventually result in different translations of the same movie title and cause confusion to the audience. This qualitative research used exploratory induction to investigate the influence of genre and translation style on the Chinese translation of Hollywood blockbuster movie titles in Mainland China and Hong Kong. Titles of 300 Chinese movies produced between 2001 and 2020 were purposefully selected from the top 50 Hollywood movies in the adventure, horror, and action genres. Genre was found to be slightly effective in the choice of translation style and strategies. Among the three genres, horror was found to have the greatest influence on the choice of translation strategy. It was concluded that translators from Mainland China were more conservative in title translation compared to translators from Hong Kong, whose attempt was to create innovative translations. The findings may have some theoretical and practical implications for film translators, book translators, advertising translators, translation trainers, and trainees.

This study aims to explore the role and possible impact of cultural background knowledge (CBK) on performance in sight translation, specifically the translation of metaphorical expressions (MEs). A between-subjects experiment was designed for 68 interpreting students who were assigned to a control group (CG) and an experimental group (EG). They were asked to sight translate a speech containing ten MEs, with only the EG members given relevant CBK beforehand. The study triangulates data from the recordings of sight translation outputs, the transcriptions of the recordings, and the subjects’ guided interviews. The paper concludes with two main findings: (1) CBK markedly alleviates the cognitive load imposed by MEs and thus facilitates the process of translation by shortening the processing time and improving the translation quality; (2) although CBK does not exert a significant influence on the choice of translation strategies as a whole, it discernibly reduces the use of omission as a coping strategy to deal with inadequacies in the understanding of metaphorical meanings.

The article focuses on the cognitive style characteristics of Ukrainian poets-translators of Shakespeare's tragedies, formed in the XIX-XXI centuries under the influence of cultural and historical context and literary style of the epoch. The analysis of Shakespeare's “ Hamlet ” (1899) and its three time-remote Ukrainian retranslations made by P. Kulish (1899), L. Hrebinka (1939) and Yu. Andrukhovych (2000), revealed the influence of the translator's cognitive style on his choice of translation strategy – historicization / archaization (focus on the author of the original work, i.e. preservation of the culturally motivated mental image of the original in the translation) or modernization / domestication (orientation on the modern reader of the translation, i.e. adaptation of the original mental image to the cultural norms of the target audience). The goal of the research is to demonstrate the dependence of the stylistic variability of different Ukrainian retranslations of time-remote original text on the translator's cognitive style, which determines his choice of translation strategy. The research methodology incorporates general scientific methods of analysis and synthesis, induction and deduction, observation and abstraction for substantiation the theoretical foundations ; linguistic-stylistic, componential and comparative analysis to compare, on the one hand, time-remote original text with different Ukrainian retranslations, and on the other hand, different Ukrainian retranslations with each other to identify specific features of individual translation style . Results of research. The socio-cultural context in which Shakespeare's tragedy “ Hamlet ” and its Ukrainian retranslations by P. Kulish, L. Hrebinka and Y. Andrukhovych were created, demonstrates fundamentally different historical epochs. On the one hand, there is the Elizabethan era in the history of Great Britain with its specific social stratification and hierarchy in society. On the other hand, three different cultural and historical periods in social development in Ukraine: 1) the last quarter of the ХІХ century (P. Kulish); 2) 1930s (L. Hrebinka); 3) the turn of the third millennium (Yu. Andrukhovych). Therefore , the cognitive style of the translators is determined by the historical, cultural context and literary style of the epoch. The study revealed differences in retranslations of the time-remote original text not only in style but also in their cognitive accuracy, as the choice of historicization / archaization or modernization / domestication translation strategy depends on the literary style of the epoch to which the translator belongs or aspires.

Chi-Chen Wang (1899-2001) is a trailblazer in promoting Chinese literature in the West and is also one of the earliest scholars who made modern Chinese literature known to the Westerners. As a both renowned writer and translator in the West, Chi-Chen Wang’s translation motivation, his comment on modern Chinese literature together with the social background of his translation activities has a great influence on his choice of translation strategies. The study provides a detailed discussion on Wang’s choice of translation strategies by analyzing his translation motivation, the cultural and political climate of his translation activities as well as his own literary judgments. And the textual analysis of his translation reveals that Wang’ translations incline to retain the foreignness in the source text and revise the original texts through condensation and deletion.

The current study aims to analyze the characterization of Jia Tanchun in English versions of Dream of the Red Chamber translated by David Hawkes and Yang Xianyi. As an important character in Dream of the Red Chamber, Jia Tanchun’s image may differ in different English translations. By comparing and analyzing the translations of the two versions, this study reveals the ways in which different translations portray the character of Jia Tanchun and the cultural factors involved. By analyzing the translated texts about Jia Tanchun in the two versions, the current study finds that in Hawkes’s translation, the image of Jia Tanchun is endowed with a kind of wisdom, calmness and thoughtfulness, while Yang Xianyi’s translation highlights Jia Tanchun’s boldness, passion and adventurousness more. This may stem from the differences in the translators’ understanding of the original image of Jia Tanchun, as well as the influence of translation style and cultural background. In the process of translation, the characterization of Jia Tanchun’s “three talents” has attracted much attention. Based on the two versions, this study analyzes Jia Tanchun’s talents in management, learning and handling. The characterization of Jia Tanchun’s “three talents” is comprehensively presented in Hawkes’s and Yang Xianyi’s translations. Additionally, this study provides a new perspective for the translation of Dream of the Red Chamber and calls on translators to emphasize the shaping and expression of the characters in the process of translation and convey the rich connotation of the original. Meanwhile, readers should also keep an open and comparative mind when reading different translations to understand the work from multiple perspectives.

This paper is a descriptive study conducted under the framework of cultural distancing in Liu Miqing’s cultural translation theory. This study classifies the culture-loaded terms in Legends of the Condor Heroes into culture-reflecting, culture-projecting, culture-refracting, and culture-insinuating based on distancing. Through quantitative and qualitative analysis, various translation strategies and approaches are identified in correspondence to the four categories. Generally speaking, approaches under the domestication strategy are used more frequently than those of the foreignization strategy; and the larger the distancing, the higher frequency of using the domestication strategy. In addition, the combination of approaches under both strategies has also proved effective. This study manages to establish the correlation between distancing degree and the choice of translation strategies and approaches, therefore providing a new perspective for exploring the translation of culture-loaded terms in martial arts fiction.

A non-language-specific speech test to evaluate the speech of cleft patients from different language and cultural backgrounds – A pilot study

The impact of cultural background on the choice of language learning strategies in the JFL context

Culture-loaded words contain vocabulary with different cultural connotations between countries and are rich in cultural colors. The essay chooses two mainstream English translation editions of Chang Sheng Dian and adopts cognitive translatology as a theoretical framework to carry out a comparative analysis of the culture-loaded words with reference to three aspects: embodiment, interactivity and creativity. Research has found that, as a native Chinese translator, Xu Yuanchong has a stronger understanding of the original text, so he can achieve the similar experience as the original author through cognition and understanding. With regard to interactivity, both sets of translators consider the relationship between the translator and the reader on the basis of experience and interaction with the text and the objective world. In respect of creativity, owing to the cognitive disparities among translators, in order to have a better comprehension of the information that the original author intends to convey, both Xu Yuanchong and Yang Xianyi exercise their creative faculties in individual thinking in terms of word and sentence selection as well as strategy adoption. Moreover, during the translation process, the cognitive backgrounds of the two groups of translators are among the factors that determine the choice of translation strategies, resulting in differences in translation styles between the two translations.

The aim of the paper deals with the preliminary verification of the hypothesis concerning the impact of the source text structure on the choice of translation strategy (form-oriented or sense-oriented) in the process of rendering a text in a native (Ukrainian) into a foreign (English) language by university students majoring in Translation. The methods of the research included a comparative analysis of the target texts (English) translated (within a predetermined time limit) from the source text (Ukrainian) related to the domain of economics. The structure of the source text, while remaining grammatically acceptable in the Ukrainian language, had been deliberately made structurally non-congruent with that of the direct word order, which is most frequently used in English. The subjects, the fourth-year BA students majoring in Translation, whose command of English ranged between B2 and C1 levels within the CEFR classification, had been properly motivated to achieve the maximum possible result. The analysis of the target texts was based on a number of parameters, which included the preservation of the source text information and its structure in them. Results. It was established that in translating from a native into a foreign language, the subjects have a tendency to replicate the structure of the source text at the levels of clauses and sentences. However, it does not always result in the distortion of the source text sense or/and the violation of the target language norms as the subjects often managed to render the said sense and to keep to the said norms by means of changing the functions of the words in the sentence. The probability of the subjects’ abandoning the source text structure increases when the latter is evidently unsuitable for replication, in which case they switch over to the sense-oriented strategy. The correlation of the two strategies in translating sentence segments is generally identical to the one related to clauses and sentences, while the form-oriented strategy generally prevails in rendering phrases. Conclusions. The source text structure has a certain impact on the choice of translation strategy increasing the share of the form-oriented approach. However, this impact is not unequivocal and may depend on a number of factors, which require additional study. The paper outlines the prospects of further research.

This paper focuses on the types of translation strategies used in rendering idiomatic expressions found in the epic poem ‘The Mountain Wreath’ into English. It seeks to explore their representation and frequency of usage, as well as the extent to which the choice of the strategy depends on cultural markedness of idiomatic units. The research is done based on the Baker’s translation model, which is for the purposes of the present study modified to include two additional strategies - apart from the standard ones, i.e. using an idiom of similar meaning and form, using an idiom of similar meaning but dissimilar form, translation by paraphrase, and translation by omission, it also incorporates loan translation (calque) and single word matches. Upon conducting both qualitative and quantitative analysis it has been concluded that loan translation and single word matches/translation by omission were the most and the least common strategies, with the frequencies of 31.94% and 1.39%, respectively. Results also suggest that the application of translation strategies involving use of idioms appears to be mostly restricted to the items expressing universal as opposed to culture-specific concepts. On the basis of these findings the paper argues that cultural markedness of idiomatic expressions could be considered as one of the most important factors behind the choice of translation strategies. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2014.v5n13p210

Translators make deliberate choices when deciding translation strategies. The choices, among others, are based upon the extent of power the translators have for decision-making. The choice of translation strategy also reflects upon the status of a source text compared to translated text, as well as the ideological motivation guiding translation activities at a given time. The tendency in the strategy used by a translator, whether source or text-oriented, can be determined by investigating how culture-specific items are translated. Thus, this study has been carried out to identify the strategy used to translate a phenomenon in modern children's literature that is the Harry Potter book series, and to analyse the ideological and power factors that influenced the choice of strategy. Eightyfour culture-specific items have been identified and grouped according to The procedures and overall strategy were based on the translation procedures classification model by The findings show that the translation strategy used to translate the Harry Potter series into Malay is largely source-oriented. The translator has limited power in deciding the strategy for translating the book series. The study also indicates that there has been a change in the ideological aspect behind children's literature translation activities in Malaysia now compared to the period of postcolonialism in the 1970s and 1980s.