Chinese Prose Research Articles

A Comparative Research of the English Translation of Hurry from the Perspective of Translation Aesthetics

As one of the significant representatives of modern Chinese prose, Zhu Ziqing’s “Hurry” is renowned for its profound reflection and delicate description. This research, from the perspective of translation aesthetics, conducts a comparative analysis of the English translations of Zhu Ziqing’s prose “Hurry” by Zhu Chunshen, Zhang Peiji, and Howard Goldblatt. By comparing the differences among the three translators in terms of language processing, cultural transformation and transmission, as well as reader orientation and acceptance in translation, this research explores the influence of different translation aesthetic concepts on the translated texts. The results indicate that Zhu Chunshen’s translation emphasizes fidelity to the original language style and artistic conception, Zhang Peiji’s translation excels in fluency and naturalness, catering more to the taste of contemporary English readers, while Howard Goldblatt’s translation is more precise and accurate in language expression, also retaining the original emotion and meaning, with a focus on the phonetic beauty and imagery of language. This research provides valuable insights into the application of translation aesthetics and translation practice.

Translation as retelling

Abstract Taking the perspective that translation is a form of (re)narration that participates in (re)constructing social reality (Baker 2018), this article examines how translation is used as a rigorous means for mediating meaning, narrativity and cultural representation. Focusing on a case study of Amores do Céu e da Terra: Contos de Macau (2014), a Portuguese version of the original Chinese prose essay collection Youqing Tiandi (1991), this article examines the Portuguese version as “reconto” (retelling) to see how the public (collective) narratives of Macao are reframed by the translators in the target language and culture. The analysis reveals that the original narratives are reconstructed by the Portuguese translators through their agency at the contextual, textual, intertextual and paratextual levels. Such reframing has resulted in a new version that reconstructs the public narratives and cultural image of Macao for Portuguese readers.

Qualities of Literary Machine Translation: A Corpus-based Case Study

The research assesses and compares the translation performance of two popular machine translation systems, GPT-4o and Youdao AI Translate, in translating into English ten Chinese prose essays excerpted from Selected Modern Chinese Essays 2 by Zhang Peiji. The goal is to discover their linguistic features and investigate how well they can perform in this translation. Through a corpus-based analysis, the research explores the STTR and word/ sentence length of their translations and conducts both automated and human evaluations on their translation quality. It reveals that GPT-4o exhibits higher lexical variety and both the two machine translation systems tend to produce more and shorter sentences than the human translation does. Both of them perform surprisingly well in the translation, as they get relatively high BLUE scores yet low TER scores, as well as high adequacy and fluency rates. Our evaluation results also show that Youdao AI Translate displays generally better performance than GPT-4o in the translation of Chinese-to-English literary texts, and they can complement each other to achieve even better performance, though a certain amount of errors are still present in both of their translations.

基于生态翻译学三维转换视角下张培基散文翻译探究

The theory of ecological translation studies provides an important theoretical and practical basis for the translation of prose in literature, and its emphasis on the three-dimensional selective adaptation of translation methods provides translators with an operable basis in the process of prose translation. Based on the theoretical framework of Eco-translation, this paper adopts a three-dimensional perspective of translation, including linguistic, cultural and communicative dimensions, to make an in-depth comparative analysis of the original text and the translated text of Selected Modern Chinese Prose in English Translation, and explores various strategies and methods in the process of translation, aiming to deepen the understanding of the translation process. The purpose of this study is to deepen the knowledge and understanding of translation techniques, to reveal how translators can make adaptive choices in different dimensions to ensure that the aesthetic qualities and deeper meanings of the original text can be faithfully reproduced in the translated text, and to illustrate how to effectively convey the unique elements and essence of Chinese culture to foreign readers, so as to help promote the international dissemination of Chinese culture and achieve the goal of “Going Global”. This will help promote the international dissemination of Chinese culture and realize the cultural strategy of “going out”.

Cognitive perspective of metaphors in Chinese Hua'er folksongs

The cognitive frame and transferences from sources to targets of metaphor study have been evident in humanities. The present article aims to compare Chinese heritage Hua'er folksongs, Chinese new poetry, Chinese prose, Chinese news reportage, and Chinese news editorials. By adopting the indicator I1, the results show that the A = B metaphor is typically representative of Chinese Hua'er folksongs. At a more detailed level of comparison of the a-index, heritage folksong Hua'er bears the lowest level of metaphoricity for its repeated use of the metaphorical lexis both in the target domain and source domain. The genre-specific metaphorical expressions in Chinese poetic texts show that the higher a-index is, the more metaphoricity and more cognitive the effort will be. The nominalized metaphorical expressions in heritage Hua'er might limit the working memory constraints and the cognitive mastery of source-to-target structure for the singers to create metaphors.

From Guwen to Chinese Literature

This article examines the Sinologists’ conceptually mediated approach in their studies and translations of Chinese literature in the nineteenth century. Gems of Chinese Literature (1884), compiled and translated by Herbert Allen Giles (1845–1935), contains the English translation of 110 Chinese prose extracts and eight poems from fifty-nine Chinese authors. This article historicizes the genesis and construction of this translation anthology and argues that, though most likely derived from a Chinese guwen (classical prose) collection, it was designed to provide a more systematic view of Chinese literature informed by the concept of national literature. By analysing its organizational strategies, discursive paratexts, and how it deviated from its possible Chinese source, the author demonstrates that Gems of Chinese Literature reveals more complex questions concerning the (re-)conceptualization and representation of Chinese literature at the encounter of Chinese and Western literary paradigms.

Lexico-thematic groups of non-equivalent vocabulary in Russian translations (against the background of Chinese prototypes)

This article is centered on the study and description of the ways of identification and designation of the surrounding reality phenomena in two cultures - Russian and Chinese. Special attention is paid to the significance of the national-cultural specificity of the word. The article considers both general issues of ethno-cultural phenomena nomination and its specific cases, namely, the functioning of non-equivalent vocabulary and ways of its translation from Chinese into Russian. It also gives a brief overview of the distribution dynamics in modern Chinese prose and the problems of studying Yu Hua’s work in Russia. The aim of the article is to reveal the importance of translations of modern Chinese fiction as sources of studying non-equivalent vocabulary and translation strategies when working on characteristic word-markers of Chinese culture used in the novel “To Live” by the outstanding modern Chinese writer Yu Hua. The study is based on the translation of the novel in question, made by the Russian scholar R. G. Shapiro. The article determines thematic groups of non-equivalent vocabulary in the novel “To Live” (word-designations of new Chinese life, ethnographisms, historicisms, background and connotative words) and the main translation methods of their transfer (borrowing, description, hyperonyms, etc.). Special attention is paid to approximate or inappropriate translations in the text, due to the translator’s ignorance of the semantics of non-equivalent words, which ultimately leads to an imperfect understanding of Chinese culture.

Традиции русской и советской культуры в повести Лу Яо «Судьба»

The study aims to shed light on the peculiarities of interpretations of Russian and Soviet culture traditions in Lu Yao’s story “Life” (1982), which became a classic of the Chinese literature of the xúngēn movement in the last third of the XX century. It is the first time that this work by the Chinese prose writer has become the subject of a separate study, in addition, the paper defines the range of works by Russian writers and artists whose traditions are reflected in the story, reveals the role of images and motifs of Russian art in its ideological and artistic singularity, which accounts for the scientific originality of the study. The artistic images of Russian and Soviet art direct references to which are contained in Lu Yao’s work served as the subject of comparative analysis. As a result of the study, it was determined that Lu Yao uses a very wide context of Russian and Soviet culture, including novels by I. A. Goncharov, N. A. Ostrovsky, stories by Ch. T. Aitmatov, V. G. Rasputin, Soviet paintings, and demonstrates adherence to the principles of realistic aesthetics in the story “Life”. The images created by the Chinese author significantly complement the gallery of typological heroes of the Russian literature of the XIX-XX centuries (the hero of the time, the ideal female image, the wise old person), bringing new artistic interpretations in keeping with the Chinese national cultural and historical tradition.

A Corpus-based Study on Translation Norms of Prose: Taking Zhu Ziqing's The View of My Father's Back as an Example

This paper builds a small-scale corpus consisting of Zhu Ziqing's original work The View of My Father's Back and its English translations by Zhang Peiji, Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang. Through the corpus, the lexical and syntactic features of prose are studied to explore the translation norms of prose. The quantitative and qualitative analysis of Zhang's and Yangs' translations shows a tendency towards conventionalized expectations at the levels of words and sentences. This study hopes to provide translators with helpful insights on translating Chinese prose and promote overseas dissemination of Chinese prose works and cultural communication.

The Application of the Functional Equivalence Theory in Prose Translation- Taking the Sight of Fathers Back Translated by Zhang Peiji as an Example

Eugene Nida makes the Functional Equivalence Theory claim, an American famous linguist, and translator, which emphasizes that the goal of translation is to translate a message into the target language as accurately and organically as feasible. In order for the intended readers to respond and feel the same as the original readers, it heavily emphasized the informational and formal comparability. Chinese prose, a flexible kind of narrative fiction that reveals the actual feelings of the author, is one of the most significant genres in Chinese literature. Therefore, prose translation should not be underestimated and should be fully integrated with the Functional Equivalence Theory to better serve the information included in the source language, as well as the formal features of the language and the target readers' reading background. This paper examines the functional equivalence theory's application to the translation of contemporary Chinese prose by using a famous passage from The Sight of Father's Back to compare and contrast the source text and target text.

Translation of Chinese Prose from the Perspective of Transitivity

The Sight of Father’s Back is a well-known prose work of Zhu Ziqing, a famous modern essayist and poet in China. The structure of the article is exquisite, simple and concise, and has high literary and aesthetic value. This paper is based on Halliday's systemic functional grammar theory and utilizes the core semantic system of conceptual function-the transitivity system, to analyze Mr. Zhang Peiji's translation of The Sight of Father’s Back. The main focus is to compare and analyze the different expressions of small sentence processes in the original text and translation, so that readers can have a deeper and more comprehensive understanding of the translated text, and provide some inspiration and thinking for translators.

Inside the History of the World: Syntheses of Literary Form between Prose Poetry and China

AbstractWhat is the international literary history behind Xi Chuan's Chinese prose poems, and what is the literary history behind translating them into English as prose poems? Did Hegel's belief that poetry can be “translated into other languages without essential detriment to its value” contribute to the birth of prose poetry, through a synthesis with poetic form? If so, what does this notion say about Hegel's idea that China lies “outside the World's History”? In the light of the historical association between China and prose poetry in the literary history of French (Judith Gautier, Victor Segalen, Henri Michaux) and English (Allen Upward, Nathaniel Tarn, Ron Silliman, Bob Perelman, Joan Retallack, Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, Tammy Lai-Ming Ho, Sarah Howe, Ken Chen, Cathy Park Hong, Eleanor Goodman, Jennifer Kronovet, and Nick Admussen), I discuss prose poetry as an outcome of what Joyelle McSweeney and Johannes Göransson call a translational “deformation zone,” to argue that translating Chinese prose poetry demonstrates China to be inside, not outside, the history of the world.

Features of Parenthetical Constructions in Mo Yan’s Novel “Tired of Being Born and Dying” (2005)

This article is devoted to the study of parenthetical constructions and structures in the Chinese language of fiction, based on the material of the novel “Tired of being Born and Dying” by Mo Yan (《生死疲劳》莫言，2005) as a problem of modern semantic-syntactic and functional-stylistic phenomena, which, representing localized fragments of speech as part of the main utterance, emphasize the nonlinearity of linguistic thinking and act as an artistic means of expression. Hence, the purpose of this work is to determine and systematize the features of the use of such plug-in constructions in artistic discourse on the selected material, to fix the beginning of the use of such a language practice not typical for Chinese literary texts previously. In the syntax of the Chinese literary language, such pragmatic inserts, or so-called parenthetics, were completely absent until the last quarter of the 20th century, because they were not a normative and characteristic means of Chinese grammar. Its active implementation in artistic discourse can be attributed only to the turn of the 20th – 21st centuries and the first quarter of the 21st century. Syntactically parenthetical constructions function at the system (combinatorics of components), pictorial (stylistic labeling) and compositional (organization of text space) levels. Based on the factual material, it has been proven that the use of parenthetical constructions practice is one of the features of Mo Yan’s idiostyle, integrating different narrative plans. The paper also systematizes the main functions of plug-in structures. The results of the study provide a basis for further research of parenthetical constructions in Chinese prose.

Prose Translation Strategy Study from Chinese to English from the Perspective of Functional Equivalence

Prose works boast rich cultural connotation, loose structure, free form of expression. There are great cultural differences between Chinese culture and West culture; English pays attention to hypotaxis and strictly obeys the grammatical expression norms. Achieving complete equivalence between the original text and the translated text when translating Chinese prose works into English is difficult. Nida's functional equivalence theory emphasizes that grammatical accuracy and literal corresponding should not be attached great importance in translation but that the reaction of the readers to the translation should be essentially like that of the original readers, which effectively reduces the conversion between the source language and target language of objective standard and furthest achieves functional equivalence between the original text and translated text and effectively solves the problems in the process of prose translation. Under the guidance of functional equivalence theory, four strategies for prose translation from the lexical, syntactic, discourse and stylistic levels are proposed in this paper, which are lexical transformation, sentence structure changing, constituent addition, holistic consideration.

An Investigation of Explicit translation in the True Story of Ah Q Based on SFL Theory

More and more combined studies of translation and linguistics have been conducted. Many papers analyzed Chinese to English translation based on Systematic functional theory (SFL), targeting ancient poems and fiction and a few types of research aimed at poses. Inspired by Halliday’s SFL theory, Hu and Zhu in 2008 further developed the metafunctions in SFL into ideational metafunctional explication, interpersonal metafunctional explication, and textual metafunctional explication. To enrich research into the Chinese prose, this paper explores the explicit translation phenomena in the true story of Ah Q, written by the best-known writer Lu Xun, in English versions, translated by Yang Xianyi and Dai Naidie (Yang and his wife) based on the explication concept proposed by Hu and Zhu. Through analysis, first, ideational metafunctional explication phenomena were reflected in cultural information explication, conceptual explication, and discourse explication; interpersonal metafunctional explication was reflected in character relationship and modal explication; textual metafunction explication was reflected in logical conjunction explication. Second, the manifestation process was attributed to translation purpose, linguistic differences, and translators. At last, this paper proposes suggestions for future translation strategies based on SFL theory.

Teaching Exploration of the Ancient and Modern Implications of Modern Chinese Prose

Under the background of China's new curriculum reform, prose teaching cannot be ignored. Combining modern prose with classical aesthetic expressions, or connecting modern prose words with ancient classical Chinese and poetry, are several teaching forms to realize the integration of ancient and modern Chinese teaching. The significance lies in that classical expression can deepen students' understanding and expression of modern prose, and transforming modern prose into ancient poetry restores and co-creates emotions through both ancient and modern aspects. The comparison of ancient and modern characters allows students to experience and create new to have a whole new sense of words.Pay attention to let students go deep into modern prose in the process of Chinese teaching, eliminate the deep and difficult thoughts and barriers to ancient classical Chinese culture, inherit ancient and modern Chinese excellent culture, and promote the formation of students' core literacy.

A Study on the Translation of Words in Zhang Peiji's English Translation of Modern Chinese Prose under the Guidance of Skopos Theory

A Study on the Translation of Words in Zhang Peiji's English Translation of Modern Chinese Prose under the Guidance of Skopos Theory

A Study of English Translation under Newmark's Theory of Text Categories: The Case of Lin Yutang's Translation of the Peach Blossoms

As a masterpiece of ancient Chinese prose, The Peach Blossoms enjoys a high reputation in China. In recent years, with China’s economic and social development as well as its international status, more and more attention has been paid to cultural propaganda. Based on Newmark’s text-categories translation theory, this article analyzes the version translated by Lin Yutang and outlines the difficulties when translating this expressive text of literary works.

차고유금(借古喩今): 옛것을 빌어 현재를 바라본다 -중국고전산문으로 본 현재의 한중관계-

This study is an attempt to examine the problems of Korea-China diplomacy, which has failed to recover the previous strategic partnership after the THAAD crisis, from a humanistic perspective through the prose of 「liuguolun(六國論)」among classical Chinese prose. In particular, it was noted that President of the People''s Republic of China Xi Jinping often cites Chinese classics as the theoretical basis of his policies when he announces his national policies. First of all, this study aims to improve current Korea-China relations based on the perspective of “caocuolun(晁錯論)” (蘇軾, 1037-1101), one of the numerous classics cited by President of the People''s Republic of China Xi Jinping while explaining the feasibility of establishing national policies. I would like to present an essential but hidden problem that must be overcome for this purpose. Next, Sunyue(荀悅, 148-209) of the Eastern Han Dynasty''s "liyiqimouliliuguolun(酈食其謀立六國論)" and Suche(蘇轍1039-1112)''s "liuguolun(六國論)”, “liuguolun(六國論)” by Hequfei(何去非, 1077-1145) and “liuguolun(六國論)” by Fanjun(范浚, 1102-1150)” and other classical Chinese prose that can suggest implications for the current Korea-China relationship, I would like to suggest a framework of thought for the diplomatic position that the Chinese side should aim for in the current Korea-China relationship.

The Mission of the Headless Horseman: on a Migrating Plot in the Chinese “Records of Anomalies”

Chinese medieval prose provide rich material for the study of crosscultural contacts. In line with this vector of research, the article discusses some features of the plot about the delayed death of a headless horseman in early medieval Chinese prose using the methods of comparative studies. The earliest known written fixation of the plot dates back to the 5th– 6thcenturies; it was associated with the name of a certain Jia Yong (or Jia Meng). The article aims to demonstrate the fruitfulness of a comparative approach applied to a case of a paradoxographical text possessing clear traces of foreign cultural influence. The article discusses the parallels of the story that exist in other folklore traditions, from modern South Chinese and North Indian to medieval Russian. The general logic of the plot is reconstructed, and some ways of its adaptation to the medieval Chinese world picture are revealed.