Contemporary Chinese Novels Research Articles

Rural versus urban fiction in contemporary Chinese literature - Quantitative approach case study

Abstract The study examined contemporary Chinese novels that depicted the social changes in rural and urban areas. We analyzed the texts using several quantitative methods of stylometry (lexical richness, activity, descriptivity, nominality, cluster analysis of the most frequent words) and corpus linguistics (keywords). We focused on the differences (both in style and in content) between contemporary fiction depicting life in Chinese rural and urban areas. The results revealed that rural stories are more dynamic (active), focusing more on the plot with a simpler description and a smaller vocabulary.

From the Paper to the Stage: a New Life for Novels? The Adaptation of Bestsellers in Contemporary China

This paper studies the evermore widespread phenomenon of the adaptation of novels for the stage, focusing on prizewinning contemporary Chinese novels. The first part provides the theoretical approach that is adopted in the second part, where two cases studies are discussed, i.e the stage adaptation of the novel Song of Everlasting Sorrow by Wang Anyi and of the novel To Live by Yu Hua. Starting from the perspective of “horizontal relations” among texts (Hutcheon 2013), the analysis of the adaptation process takes its distance from the fidelity/infidelity discourse, in order to investigate the network of echoing versions (trans-media, trans-language, etc) it is able to produce. This network is much more interesting to explore than supposed vertical hierarchies. Nevertheless, not every version is a text able to live independently from its source: the analysis shows that today's phenomenon of trans-media adaptation is fostered by a cultural industry that aims at exploiting all profits from a best-selling prizewinning novel. The role played by this industry in the adaptation process needs to be fully considered.

A Study of Creative Treason in Red Sorghum : From the Perspective of Rewriting Theory

In literary translation, the translated works always deviate from and distort the original texts to a certain extent because of the linguistic and differences between nations. Therefore, Robert Escarpit，a French literature sociologist, puts forward the notion of “creative treason”. He claims that “translation is always a kind of creative treason”. Translated by Goldblatt, Red Sorghum , the English version of Hong Gao Liang Jia Zu which is written by Mo Yan and a representative of contemporary Chinese novels, is no exception. However, the traditional translation approach cannot give a full explanation to the “creative treason” in Goldblatt’s translation, let alone judge the translator and his translated work objectively and fairly. Since translation studies took the cultural turn in 1970s, some translation theorists have adopted a descriptive method to analyze translation from the socio-cultural perspective. During this process, Lefevere, the leading figure of Manipulation School, deserves special attention. The Rewriting Theory proposed by him expanded the horizon of translation studies. Taking this thoery as theoretical foundation, this paper aims to analyze the underlying causes for Goldblatt’s “creative treason” in Red Sorghum and explore a new route in research of Goldblatt and his translations. Meanwhile, the author hopes that this paper can bring some suggestions to the transmission of contemporary Chinese literature abroad.

El estilo del traductor en el tratamiento de las onomatopeyas del chino al español

Onomatopoeia are words with peculiar phonological features and expressive capacity which distinguish them from other types of words. These traits together with other elements related to their use in each language often pose a challenge for translators of specific language combinations. This article analyses how Chinese onomatopoeia are translated into Spanish, and it is based on a case study of the Spanish version of the Chinese novel Huozhe (活着) (To live). This piece of creative writing has been chosen because the original text contains many onomatopoeia and because the target text can be regarded as a fine example from a translation point of view. The article begins with a brief overview of the main features of these words and their role in literary texts, as well as the general results of the analysis of a corpus of seven contemporary Chinese novels and their translations into Spanish. Subsequently, the study explores the translation of onomatopoeia in the selected work of fiction in order to identify the mechanisms and translation techniques the translator has adopted and the results in the Spanish target text.

Translator’s style or translational style? A corpus-based study of style in translated Chinese novels

The present paper is an investigation of the style in translated Chinese novels by Howard Goldblatt, a research professor who has translated many modern and contemporary Chinese novels into English, in accordance with the corpus methodology proposed by Baker. The translations of Gladys Yang, another renowned translator of Chinese literature, are taken as a comparable corpus. The results show that the statistics provided by corpus tools, such as standardized type–token ratio, mean sentence length, frequencies of reporting verbs and optional use of reporting that are not so significant for differentiating translators’ styles. The authors propose that the translator’s style be categorized into two sub-types: S-type (source text type) and T-type (target text type). The former refers to the regularities manifested in the distinctive strategies adopted by the translators in coping with specific source language phenomena in all their translations, while the latter focuses on the habitual linguistic behaviour of individual translators. Additionally, it shows that the T-type translator’s style seems, based on the present corpus statistics, to belong to the translational style or translation universals – that is, to the universal features of the translated language; while the S-type is of more significance in translation studies. Finally, a multiple-complex model of comparison is proposed for the study of translator’s style.

Translating onomatopoeia from Chinese into Spanish: a corpus-based analysis

This article analyses how Chinese onomatopoeias have been translated into Spanish. It is based on a corpus of seven contemporary Chinese novels and their respective Spanish translations. It begins with a brief overview of the features which distinguish onomatopoeias from other types of words and how the corpus was prepared. This is followed by an analysis of how the translators of the selected novels deal with onomatopoeias seen in the light of Toury's (2004) adequacy-acceptability conceptual framework and the classification of translation techniques proposed by Molina (2006).This study concludes that, although suppressing onomatopoeias or substituting them for another type of word are common practices, these are not the only possible techniques to transfer these text units. There are other choices that allow for the maintenance of their expressive capacity in the target text (TT), without violating the TT literary system and culture and that depend on the role of the translator in the translation.

Contemporary Chinese Novels and Short Stories, 1949-1974: An Annotated Bibliography

Contemporary Chinese Novels and Short Stories, 1949-1974: An Annotated Bibliography

Contemporary Chinese Novels and Short Stories, 1949–1974: An Annotated Bibliography. Compiled by Meishi Tsai with the assistance of I-mei Tsai. Cambridge, Mass., and London: Harvard University Press, 1979. xvi, 408 pp. List of Abbreviations, Index of Authors, Title Index, Subject Index. $25.00. - Twentieth-century Chinese Writers and their Pen Names. Compiled by Paoliang Chu Boston: G. K. Hall & Co.,

Contemporary Chinese Novels and Short Stories, 1949–1974: An Annotated Bibliography. Compiled by Meishi Tsai with the assistance of I-mei Tsai. Cambridge, Mass., and London: Harvard University Press, 1979. xvi, 408 pp. List of Abbreviations, Index of Authors, Title Index, Subject Index. 35.00. - Volume 39 Issue 3

Contemporary Chinese novels and short stories, 19491974: an annotated bibliography. By Meishi Tsai. pp. 408. Cambridge, Mass., and London, Harvard University Press, 1979.

Contemporary Chinese novels and short stories, 19491974: an annotated bibliography. By Meishi Tsai. pp. 408. Cambridge, Mass., and London, Harvard University Press, 1979.

Contemporary Chinese Novels and Short Stories 1949-1974: An Annotated Bibliography

Contemporary Chinese Novels and Short Stories 1949-1974: An Annotated Bibliography

Contemporary Chinese Novels and Short Stories, 1949-1974: An Annotated Bibliography.

Contemporary Chinese Novels and Short Stories, 1949-1974: An Annotated Bibliography.