Mainland Version Research Articles

A corpus-based comparative study of explicitation by investigating connectives in two Chinese translations of The Lord of the Rings

Abstract This article conducts a corpus-based comparative study of explicitation, one of the translation universals widely explored, by investigating the use of connectives in two versions of the Chinese translation of The Lord of the Rings from Taiwan and Mainland China. The two versions are compared with the originally produced Chinese text and their source text to find out whether explicitation through the use of connectives occurs in Chinese translation and to what extent such explicitation is influenced by the source text. A quantitative plus qualitative method is adopted to analyze the connectives in the two Chinese versions and compare them with their counterparts in the source text and the non-translated target text. The results show that explicitation occurs in both versions and that the Taiwan version exhibits a higher degree of explicitation than the Mainland version. Such findings may result from different pedagogical and regional translation norms, especially with greater importance attached to faithfulness in translation in Mainland China.

The Mainland Mandarin Hearing in Noise Test

Although Mandarin speakers make up approximately a quarter of the world population, there was no standardized speech assessment material in Mandarin until the development of the Mainland version of...

A cross-cultural study of primary personality factor structure in the preparation of the Hawaiian high school personality questionnaire

The items of the High School Personality Questionnaire were adapted into the Hawaiian idiom for use with native Hawaiians. On two groups (550 boys and girls ages 12-14 and 580 of ages 15-17), factor analyses were done using the 26 variables created by odd/even splitting of the 13 scales (the 14th, intelligence, being omitted). Component analyses to check on number of factors were also done on the 26 plus 58 items used as possible replacement material. The scree test on both indicated slightly more than the number of factors existing in the scales, as is usual. and 15 were taken out and rotated to simple structure. Two proved to be interpretable error factors, different in the junior and senior groups, but the remaining 13 had (with few exceptions) the expected markers, and did match across ages. Source traits 0--guilt proneness, Q4--ergic tension (and perhaps Q3--self-sentiment), however, were of small variance compared to the original U.S. Mainland version, which might be due either to poor "translation" or to their genuinely being of small variance in Hawaiians.