Chinese Translation Research Articles

Research on Untranslatability of Tang Poetry from the Perspective of Theory of Three Beauties Taking Xu Yuanchong's Translation of 300 Tang Poems as an Example

On the platform of international cultural exchange, the traditional Chinese culture, with its rich content, shines brightly in the world. Tang poetry is an important part of traditional Chinese culture and is also loved by many foreign readers. Therefore, exploring effective translation strategies is one of the important tasks to promote the dissemination of Tang poetry. Untranslatability exists in the translation of Tang poetry, which is one of the key problems troubling translators. In the existing research, there is still a gap in how to solve the untranslatability of Tang poetry, and there is a lack of effective and systematic translation strategies. The theory of Three Beauties is an important translation theory put forward by Xu Yuanchong, a leading scholar in Chinese translation circles. The theory of Three beauties requires that the translation should conform to three standards: beauty of sound, beauty of form, and beauty of meaning. This paper chooses the case analysis method and analyzes some cases of Xu Yuanchong's English Translation of 300 Tang Poems based on the theory of three beauties to explore how to deal with the untranslatability of Tang poems in line with the standard of three beauties. This paper divides the case into two parts: language and culture. Author comes up with translation strategies to deal with these two types of untranslatability. This paper focuses on the compensatory strategies of Tang Poems found by the author when reading Xu Yuanchong's English Translation of 300 Tang Poems. This strategy is an innovation of the previous compensation methods, and it also shows the translator's overall understanding of the text for readers to read. According to the research findings, the author concludes that the most important thing for translators is to understand the connotation of Tang poetry and use translation strategies according to the specific situation.

An Analysis of the Chinese Translation of De Profundis from the Perspective of Communicative Translation

This thesis is based on Zhu Chunshen's translation of De Profundis. The original text is the prison memoir of Oscar Wilde, reflecting on his relationship with his lover-- Bosie, but also involving topics such as art, life and religion, and it discusses the emotions and arts based on the inextricable relationship in the context of suffering. Due to its profound content and meaningful prose, as well as the language and cultural differences between China and the UK, it is difficult to fully convey the original meaning in translation. Regardless of it, Mr. Zhu Chunshen's translation is widely circulated in the industry and highly praised. This work uses Newmark's translation theory to analyse this translation from three aspects, namely the application of four-character phrases, the adjustments of sentence structures and the reformation of the original forms, so as to understand the deep meaning and translation art conveyed by the translator.

Study of the Translation Strategies for the Chinese Culture-loaded Words in Chinese Classic Dance under Functional Equivalence Theory

In the past century, Chinese classic dance has entered the spotlight of the international stage. Translation activities and researches on Chinese dance have been increasingly rising. The interdisciplinary study of the translation in Chinese dance field has practical significance and theoretical value for the expansion of the connotation of Chinese translation studies and the development of Chinese dance in the world. One of the features Chinese dance carried is that it involves abundant culture-loaded words. As a consequence, under the direction of functional equivalence theory proposed by Eugene Nida, this study is focused on the analysis of Chinese classic dance terminologies and cultural-loaded words, and the translation strategies of them. Afterwards, the study discovers that, first and foremost, when utilizing the functional equivalence theory, the target texts quality is better; second, translators will use several translation techniques for various categories of cultural-loaded terms in Chinese classical dance; third, several typical approaches that are used in this study with cultural connotations from Chinese classical dance are as follows: literal translation, free translation, annotation and substitution, among which literal translation and annotation are the most popular.

“Blast Off!”: The Afterlives of Nostalgia in Su Yu Hsin’s Blast Furnace No. 2

In her 2022 video installation, Blast Furnace No. 2, artist Su Yu Hsin explores the history of the German factory, Henrichshütte Ironworks. Namely, the artist focuses on Henrichshütte’s former blast furnace, which was bought by a Chinese steel mill in September 1989 and moved to China, where it operated until 2015. Now a state-owned museum, this former factory, located in Hattingen, Germany, is a snapshot of the past—a memorial of sorts for the region’s bygone industrial prosperity. The history and intercontinental movement of this blast furnace inspires Su’s affinities towards spaces located in-between shifting temporalities, identities, and changing environmental conditions within Hattingen and beyond. Su weaves archival materials, documentary film, and interview excerpts into a speculative narrative that connects the years 1989, 2022, and 2050. Blurring reality and imagination, the video follows the fictionalized trail of Lin, a Chinese translator who accompanied the dismantling of the blast furnace over thirty years ago. According to the narrative, Lin left behind an unfinished science fiction novel, which takes place in 2022. In Lin’s novel, the protagonist develops a utopian machine in the form of a blast furnace. With this apparatus, she sends herself into space with the goal of finding an alternative energy source to replace coal. Blast Furnace No. 2 constellates temporal spaces of socio-political and environmental nostalgia, predicated upon both remembered and imagined understandings of the past, present, and future. The work emphasizes contradictory gaps in between socially driven ideological systems and their afterlives, determined to memorialize what most would just as soon forget.

Three Dimensions of Transformation in the Translation of Publicity Materials Taking Hello Chengdu for Example

As a widely recognized Chinese local translation theory, ecological translation theory has become more and more widely researched in recent years, and its three-dimensional transformation theory is feasible in translation practice. Herein, this paper will review and analyze the publicity-material translation through three-dimensional transformation theory under ecological translation theory, hoping to contribute its own modest efforts to publicity translation in Chengdu.

Translating Gendered Paralysis in Dubliners: A Reflective Retranslation of James Joyce's ‘A Painful Case’ through a Feminist Translation Approach

ABSTRACT While current Chinese translations of James Joyce's Dubliners are acclaimed, demonstrating a commendable effort to make this classic of English language world literature accessible to Chinese readers, the book's depiction of the way femininity, masculinity and broader society in early twentieth century Ireland are ‘paralysed’ could be further emphasised for young Chinese readers through specific translation strategies. This exegetical paper offers a reflective analysis based on a comparison between our feminist retranslation of one of the short stories in Dubliners, ‘A Painful Case’, and two of its existing translations. In doing so, this essay aims to demonstrate how specific translation strategies can encourage a more critical gender and cultural consciousness in a younger generation of Chinese readers, and sheds light on the benefits of applying feminist translation methods to the retranslation of a classic naturalistic short story by a male writer. This article also makes a fresh and distinctive contribution to the scholarship of Chinese studies of Joyce and the translation of his work, through the lens of gender and culture.

Burden of non-communicable diseases among adolescents and young adults aged 10-24 years in the South-East Asia and Western Pacific regions, 1990-2019: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2019.

Although non-communicable diseases (NCDs) remain the leading causes of mortality and disability worldwide, little comprehensive or recent evidence of the burden of NCDs among adolescents and young adults in the South-East Asia and Western Pacific regions is available. We aimed to report population shifts in people aged 10-24 years and their NCD burden from 1990 to 2019 using data from the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study (GBD) 2019. We retrieved data from GBD 2019 for people aged 10-24 years in the South-East Asia and Western Pacific regions from 1990 to 2019. We presented population shifts and analysed deaths, years of life lost (YLLs), years lived with disability (YLDs), and disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs) for NCDs. We also quantified the associations of deaths and DALYs with the Socio-demographic Index (SDI) and Universal Health Coverage (UHC) effective coverage index using Spearman correlation and linear regression analyses. Percentages are reported to 1 decimal place and rates are reported to 2 decimal places. In 2019, there were 559·2 million young people aged 10-24 years in the South-East Asia region and 335·0 million in the Western Pacific region; India and China remained the countries with greatest number of this age group. In 1990-2019, India had an absolute increase of 139·4 million adolescents, while China had a decrease of 134·3 million. In 2019, NCDs accounted for 27·3% (95% uncertainty interval 25·1 to 29·2) and 34·6% (33·5 to 36·1) of total deaths, and 49·8% (45·3 to 54·4) and 65·1% (60·6 to 69·3) of total DALYs in the South-East Asia and the Western Pacific regions, respectively. Neoplasms, cardiovascular diseases, and mental disorders were the leading causes of NCD burden in 42 countries. Kiribati had the highest rates of deaths (62·82 [50·77 to 76·11] per 100 000 population), YLLs (4364·73 [3545·04 to 5275·63] per 100 000 population), and DALYs (9368·73 [7713·65 to 11340·99] per 100 000 population) for NCDs, whereas Australia (6976·51 [5044·46 to 9190·01] per 100 000 population) and New Zealand (6716·81 [4827·25 to 8827·69] per 100 000 population) had the largest rates of YLDs due to NCDs. From 1990 to 2019 across both regions, the rate of death due to NCDs declined by over a third (-32·8% [-41·1 to -22·9] in the South-East Asia region and -40·0% [-48·6 to -30·4] in the Western Pacific region), and DALYs decreased by about 12% (-12·0% [-16·8 to -7·7] in the South-East Asia region and -12·8% [-17·7 to -8·7] in the Western Pacific region), whereas the proportion of NCD burden relative to all-cause burden increased (45·7% [32·9 to 61·7] for deaths and 41·2% [35·2 to 48·8] for DALYs in the South-East Asia region; 11·8% [7·1 to 21·5] for deaths and 18·2% [14·6 to 22·0] for DALYs in the Western Pacific region). The rate of deaths and DALYs due to NCDs decreased monotonically alongside increases in SDI (rs=-0·57 [95% CI -0·81 to -0·32] for deaths and rs=-0·30 [-0·61 to 0·03] for DALYs). The rate of deaths (rs=-0·89 [95% CI -0·97 to -0·80]) and DALYs (rs=-0·67 [-0·93 to -0·41]) due to NCDs also decreased alongside increases in the UHC effective coverage index. Specific preventive and health service measures are needed for adolescents and young adults in countries with different levels of socioeconomic development to reduce the burden from NCDs. National Natural Science Foundation of China. For the Chinese translation of the abstract see Supplementary Materials section.

인공지능 기반 한문 번역을 위한 코퍼스 추출 및 정제 과정

It is fun to imagine how good it would be to be able to translate a lot of Chinese classics by using AI in an era where the field of AI is expanding day by day. This is why commercialization of machine translation called artificial intelligence can drastically reduce the manpower and time spent on classical Chinese translation. To this end, various institutions are improving their performance by developing artificial intelligence Chinese character recognition and Chinese character translation programs. AI-based Chinese character translation, research is concentrated in the field of technology, and there are no reported studies on the corpus extraction process and purification process.
 For deep learning, which trains artificial intelligence, automatic translation data, that is, corpus that connects Chinese text and translations in parallel, must be created. In order to make a corpus, a lot of corpus data is extracted through human translation, and a high-quality corpus is made through refining based on detailed guidelines. Here, we tried to confirm the purification process of how the extracted corpus data were selected.
 As a result of checking the corpus purification process, words such as various titles, items, and names, metrological units or number of people were all excluded. Short sentences containing place names, human names, government posts, places, products, dates, and proper nouns were also removed because they were not appropriate as corpus. In addition, prefixes consisting of one or two letters, such as adverbs, conjunctions, tense, and pronounciation at the beginning of the sentence, were deleted. In the future, it is expected that the time and expense of translation will be greatly reduced if extraction is carried out in consideration of these contents in the construction of corpus for AI-based Chinese character translation.

『너무도 쓸쓸한 당신』 중역본에서의 문화 요소 번역 방법 연구 - 생태번역학 시각에서 -

『너무도 쓸쓸한 당신』 중역본에서의 문화 요소 번역 방법 연구 - 생태번역학 시각에서 -

Comparing Two Chinese Translations of Amoretti 67 Based on Reception Aesthetics

Similar to other sonnets, Edmund Spenser’s Amoretti followed Petrarchan courtship but also demonstrated the unique Spenserian form. Spenser’s superb creative skills profoundly influenced his contemporaries and the English poets of later generations. Nevertheless, the translation of Spenser’s sonnets began exceedingly late in China with few results. Guided by the horizon of expectation in reception aesthetics, this study compared Cao Minglun and Hu Jialuan’s versions of Amoretti Sonnet 67 (Amoretti 67) based on their content, rhyme, and language style. The main question is to understand what horizons of expectations Hu and Cao’s translations reflect based on reception aesthetics, and how do Hu and Cao’s horizons fuse with the original author’s horizon of expectation? Guided by translators’ vision of expectation, Hu emphasized that both the content and style of the translation should be faithful to the original text. Thus, Hu’s translation is the closest to the original poem. Contrarily, Cao’s translation sought a balance between the original text and the translation. Cao aimed to maintain the content and format of the original poetry while capitalizing on the strengths of the Chinese language. Both Chinese versions embody their translator’s values. The significance of this study extends to its implications for Chinese readers delving into Spenser’s poetic world. Analyzing Cao and Hu’s diverse strategies empowers readers to navigate Amoretti 67’s depth, fostering understanding of Spenser’s artistry and the intricacies of translation.

Inequality of 生词 meaning in comprehensive Chinese books on Indonesian learners: A translation analysis study

This study aims to determine the inequality of Chinese translation into English and Indonesian, because differences in meaning will affect the meaning of each word translated into different languages, this difference has a very dangerous effect if there is an error in translation, one language and the other have their own characteristics and language styles, and have rules and are bound by their respective cultures and nationalities, To minimize errors or errors in translation, it is necessary to pay close attention to the word when in a sentence it will have a different meaning when combined with other sentences.

Литературоведческое и переводческое восприятие пьесы А. Н. Островского «Бесприданница» в Китае

The article is devoted to the reception of one of the most famous plays of A. N. Ostrovsky in China – “Without a Dowry”. The play belongs to the late period of the playwright's work and is characterised by a complex genre. In Russian literary studies it is considered as a socio-psychological drama with a bright lyrical beginning. The aim of the article is to give an idea of the translation, literary and literary perception of the play in China. The author of four versions of the play's translation into Chinese, Chen Bingyi, analyses the peculiarities of the play's translation. It reveals the main aspects of literary research on the play in China and examines the particular understanding of “Without a Dowry” by the playwright and translator Chen Baichen. By comparing the plots of A.N. Ostrovsky's drama and Chen Baichen’s drama “Love on a Steep Cliff”, the article highlights the influence of the character Katerina from the famous play “The Storm” on the interpretation of the female protagonist and the genre characteristics of “Without a Dowry”. The analysis demonstrates that Chinese translators, literary critics, and playwrights collectively perceive this psychological drama by Ostrovsky as a social drama within the historical and cultural context of 1940s China.

New voices in an old form: rethinking the earliest Chinese translations of ‘The Isles of Greece’

ABSTRACT This paper reexamines the first translations of Byron’s ‘The Isles of Greece’ by Liang Qichao, Ma Junwu, Huang Kan and Hu Shi to highlight an essential facet of Chinese literary modernity – namely, the recourse to traditional poetic language and forms, which, though often dismissed as outdated and incapable of representing modern reality in the dominant narratives of Chinese literary history, nonetheless reflects a growing sense of urgency to find a new voice during the late Qing and early Republican periods. With considerable emphasis placed on the poetic form and narrative mode of both the original and its translations, this study facilitates a productive textual investigation into the temporal–spatial paradigm of progression and evolution of early modern Chinese poetry as well as modern Chinese literature from a historical perspective. The findings suggest that the poetic manipulations by the respective translators were in line with the nationalist discourse of the day and that their act of rewriting poetic tradition to integrate the legacy of the past into a new vision of the present established a far-reaching basis for the construction of Chinese literary modernity.

Translation of Long Sentences in Engineering Contracts under the Theory of Functional Equivalence: Taking FIDIC Conditions of Contract for Construction (Red Book) as an Example

The FIDIC (Fédération lnternationale Des lngénieurs Conseils) Conditions of Contract for Construction are widely used in international engineering contracts, and their translation also plays an active role in the construction of China's own engineering contract texts. Due to the complexity and variety of the logical levels and modifiers, understanding and translation have become a major challenge. This paper will use functional equivalence theory as the theoretical guide, take the English and Chinese versions of FIDIC Conditions of Contract for Construction (1999 Red Book) as the main research text, analyze the long sentences of FIDIC Conditions of Contract for Construction and its translation techniques in Chinese translation, and explore how Chinese translation can deal with complex long sentences to achieve the closest and most natural equivalence between the target language and the source language.

Measuring musical sophistication in the Chinese general population: Validation and replication of the Simplified Chinese Gold-MSI

The Goldsmiths Musical Sophistication Index has been translated into several European languages. In the East Asian area, a traditional Chinese language translation is available. Due to differences in written characters and language use in various Chinese regions, a translation using simplified Chinese would reach a wider audience in mainland China and other regions. Our study, therefore, aimed to validate the simplified Chinese version of the Gold-MSI (Gold-MSI-SC) to replicate psychometric properties and factor structures of the Gold-MSI and to investigate the relationship between socioeconomic status (SES) and factors of the Gold-MSI-SC in a mainland Chinese sample ( N = 64,555). Following the translation guidelines for intercultural research, the Gold-MSI-SC self-report questionnaire, two music listening tests, and the Musical-Rhythmic Intelligence subscale (M-RI) were included in the main study together with the demographic and SES-related questions. All subscales of the Gold-MSI-SC showed high internal consistency (Cronbachs’ ɑ = [.80–.91]) and good test-retest reliability ( rtt = [.842–.935]). Confirmatory factor analysis revealed that the original bi-factor structure was replicated with satisfactory fit (root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA) = .053 and comparative fit index (CFI) = .888). Correlations between the Gold-MSI-SC and the music tests, as well as the M-RI, demonstrated strong convergent and discriminant validity; structural equation models revealed negative relationships between age and the Gold-MSI factors, while SES positively correlated with all of the subscales. The Gold-MSI-SC has thus been shown to be a reliable tool in assessing multidimensional musical behaviors in simplified Chinese and in supporting the measurability of musical sophistication in different cultures.

Gaoli Zhiming Shilüe: An Intercultural, Interlaced Text between the Jesuits in Shanghai and the Missions Etrangères de Paris in Seoul

Abstract In 1900, as the Boxer Uprising raged in China, two Chinese translations of the work Histoire de l’Eglise de Corée (Gaoli zhiming shilüe and Gaoli zhuzheng) were published to encourage Chinese Catholics, given the difficult history of persecutions faced by Korean Catholics. A close examination of these translations, along with the translator of Gaoli zhiming shilüe’s earlier work on the history of Korean martyrs, reveals that they relied on different Korean source texts and even embellished the original narrative in places. These modifications, in turn, demonstrate the complex chain of translation and information within East Asian missions, working between several languages and incorporating a variety of sources for information. In particular, a study of these texts highlights connections between the Catholic mission in Shanghai and Korea throughout a period when both faced intense opposition and the latter outright suppression. This article is part of the special issue of the Journal of Jesuit Studies, “Jesuits in Modern Far East,” guest edited by Steven Pieragastini.

Retracted: Deep Learning Model-Based Machine Learning for Chinese and Japanese Translation

Retracted: Deep Learning Model-Based Machine Learning for Chinese and Japanese Translation

Four Challenges Faced by Early Chinese Buddhist Translators: A Case Study of Zhi Qian’s Chinese Translation of Dhammapada

This study focuses on the translation of Buddhist scriptures into Chinese, specifically the Faju jing, a Chinese version of the Dhammapada completed in the third century CE. It reveals that the Faju jing is not a straightforward translation but a combination of different sources. The translator, Zhi Qian, faced challenges in integrating multiple translation practices, dealing with diverse original Indian languages, incorporating pre-existing phrases from other translators’ work, and managing divergent opinions within the translation team regarding the translation style. This multi-layered process of translation, involving the participation of multiple translators, also likely occurred in other early translations. These challenges extended beyond mere comprehension of the Indian text, resulting in potential errors and deviations from straightforward translations. It is possible that some mistranslations were a consequence of integrating multiple traditions within the source text, making it difficult for translators to maintain a consistent linguistic framework and leading to errors. Furthermore, this study highlights the remarkable efforts of Chinese translators who collaborated with foreign monks in translation groups. It emphasizes the important role of Chinese translators in integrating diverse translation processes and refining the language to suit Chinese readers. They incorporated earlier translations and modified the language to align with Chinese forms. Overall, this case study sheds light on the complexity of early Chinese Buddhist translations, influenced by the integration of multiple traditions and the localization of the texts. It underscores the significance of Chinese translators in the translation process and their contributions to the development of Chinese Buddhist literature.

A Corpus-Based Study on the Chinese Translation of Run Away from the Perspective of Androgyny

Run Away, the collection of eight short stories written by Nobel laureate Alice Munro examines the lives of Canadian women throughout the last century. As a female writer’s novels, it inevitably flashes valuable female consciousness. From the perspective of androgyny, this thesis will explore the gender awareness in Li Wenjun’s Chinese version on the lexical level by investigating corpus data and analyzing specific cases. This study holds that male translators with androgynous perspectives could cross the gender border and translate from other gender’s perspective to make feminine elements visible.

Objective assessment of the association between frailty and sedentary behavior in older adults: a cross-sectional study

BackgroundGiven the inconsistent findings of the association between frailty and sedentary behavior in older adults, this cross-sectional study investigated the aforementioned association using four different frailty criteria and two sedentary behavior indices in older adults.MethodsData from older adults (age ≥ 65 y) who participated in health examinations or attended outpatient integrated clinics at a medical center in Taipei, Taiwan, were collected. Frailty was measured using the modified Fried Frailty Phenotype (mFFP), Clinical Frailty Scale in Chinese Translation (CFS-C), Study of Osteoporotic Fractures (SOF) index, and Clinical Frailty-Deficit Count (CF-DC) index; sedentary behavior was assessed with a waist-worn accelerometer. Adjusted linear regression ascertained the association between frailty and both sedentary behavior outcomes.ResultsAmong the 214 participants (mean age 80.82 ± 7.14 y), 116 were women. The average total sedentary time and number of sedentary bouts were 609.74 ± 79.29 min and 5.51 ± 2.09 times per day, respectively. Frail participants had a longer total sedentary time (odds ratio [OR]: 30.13, P = .01 and 39.43, P < .001) and more sedentary bouts (OR: 3.50 and 5.86, both P < .001) on mFFP and CFS-C assessments, respectively. The SOF index revealed more sedentary bouts among frail than in robust participants (OR: 2.06, P = .009), without a significant difference in the total sedentary time. Frail participants defined by the CF-DC index were more likely to have frequent sedentary bouts (OR: 2.03, P = .016), but did not have a longer total sedentary time.ConclusionsRegardless of the frailty criteria adopted, frailty was positively associated with the number of sedentary bouts per day in older adults. A significant correlation between frailty and total sedentary time was detected only with mFFP and CFS-C indices. Further research may target decreasing the sedentary bouts in older adults as a strategy to improve frailty.