A Corpus-Based Comparative Study on George Orwell’s 1984 Chinese Translation Strategies

Keli LI, Yufang Ho

Abstract


This paper aims to adopt a corpus-based approach to compare the translation strategies employed by Dong Leshan (1979/1998) and Lau Shiuming (1984/2011) in their translation of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. The linguistic features are first retrieved from our translation corpora using the corpus tools, ICTCLAS 5.0 and AntConc 3.4.3, and then compared and analyzed quantitatively. Statistics show that the two translators differ significantly in their employment of four types of function word: modal particles, conjunctions, prepositions, and numerals. Equivalent textual examples from the two translations are extracted and analyzed qualitatively, to illustrate how the use of these function words embodies different translation strategies. The analysis specifically focuses on the comparison between hypotactic and paratactic features in the English-Chinese translations. The findings in this study indicate that Dong shows the tendency of aiming to achieve formal equivalence to the English source language in his Chinese translation. By contrast, Lau tends to provide a translation that conforms to the customary convention of the Chinese target language by adding modal particles and adversative conjunctions as well as adjusting the sentence order, to make the implied meaning in a sentence explicitly for the target reader.

 


Keywords


Nineteen Eighty-Four; Translation strategy; Corpus linguistics; Hypotactic level

Full Text:

PDF

References


Baker, M. (1995). Corpora in translation studies: An overview and some suggestions for future research. Target, 7(2), 223-243.

Baker, M. (2000). Towards a methodology for investigating the style of a literary translator. Target, 12 (2), 241-266.

Bassnett, S., & Lefevere, A. (Eds.). (1990). Translation, history and culture. London & New York, Printer Pub Ltd.

Bosseaux, C. (2001). A study of the translator’s voice and style in the French translations of Virginia Woolf’s The Waves. In M. Olohan (Ed.), CTIS occasional papers (pp.55-75). Manchester: CTIS, UMIST.

Cook. G. (2010). Translation in language and teaching. Oxford, Oxford University Press.

Dong, L. S. (Trans.) (1998). Nineteen eighty-four. Shenyang, China: Shenyang Education Publishing House.

Harold, S. (1998). Machine translation methodology. In M. Baker (Ed.), Encyclopedia of translation studies. London & New York: Routledge.

Hou, L. (2013). Ideological manipulation in literary translation: A case study of Dong Leshan’s Chinese version of nineteen eighty-four (Unpublished Master thesis). Changsha: Changsha Normal University.

Hu, X., & Zeng, J. (2009). A corpus-based study of explicitation of grammatical markers in Chinese translation fiction. Foreign Languages Research, (5), 72-79.

Huang, L., & Chu, C. (2014). Translator’s style or translational style? A corpus-based study of style in translated Chinese novels. Asia Pacific Translation and Intercultural Studies, 1(2), 122-141.

Lau, S. M. (2005). Classical Chinese literature: An anthology of translations. Shanghai: Fudan University Press.

Lau, S. M. (Trans.) (2011). Nineteen eighty-four. Shanghai: Shanghai Translation Publishing House.

Liu, D. Q. (2010). Chinese a verby language: On typological differences between verby languages and nouny languages. Chinese Teaching in the World, (1), 3-17.

Liu, Z., & Chen, D. (2010). An empirical study of explicitation in Chinese translated fiction: With reference to three versions of Lady Chatterley’s Lover. Foreign Languages and their Teaching, (4), 8-13.

Lü, S., & Zhu, D. (2013). Speeches on grammar and rhetoric. Beijing: The Commercial Press.

Nida, E. A. (1964). Toward a science of translating. Leiden, Brill Academic Publishers.

Nida, E. A. (1982). Translating meaning. San Dimas, California: English Language Institute.

Orwell, G. (2006). Nineteen eighty-four. London: Penguin.

Olohan, M. (2003). How frequent are the contractions: A study of contracted forms in the translational English corpus. Target, 15(1), 59-89.

Qin, H., & Wang, K. (2009). A parallel corpus-based study of Chinese as target language in E-C translation. Foreign Language Teaching and Research, (2), 131-136.

Saldanha, G. (2011). Translator style: Methodological considerations. The Translator, 17(1), 25-50.

Tang, L. (2012). A translator’s adaptation and selection in the translational eco-environment with Dong Leshan’s translation of nineteen eighty-four as a case in point (Unpublished Master thesis). Xiangtan University.

Wang, K., & Hu, X. (2008). A parallel corpus-based study on lexical features of translated Chinese. Chinese Translators Journal, (6), 16-21.

Wang, L. (1990). The collected works of Wang Li. Jinan: Shandong Education Press.

Winters, M. (2004). F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Die Schönen und Verdammten: A corpus-based study of loan words and code switches as features of translators’ style. Language Matters, Studies in the Languages of Africa, 35 (1), 248-258.

Xiao, R. (2010). How different is translated Chinese from native Chinese? A corpus-based study of translation universals. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 15(1), 5-35.

Xiao, R., & Ming, Y. (2009). Using corpora in translation studies: The state of the art. In Baker, M. (ed), Contemporary corpus linguistics (pp.237-262). London, Continuum.

Xiao, Z. H. (2012). Corpus-based studies of translational Chinese in English-Chinese translation. Shanghai: Shanghai Jiaotong University Press.

Xu, H. (2011). Translation and Publication of Nineteen Eighty-Four in China. Masterpieces Review, (5), 166-168.

Xu, X. (2007). A study on Dong Leshan as a translator (Unpublished master thesis). Tanjin, China: Nankai University.

Xue, N. (2003). Chinese word segmentation as character tagging. Computational Linguistics and Chinese Language Processing, 8(1), 20-48.

Yang, X. (2003). On dynamic equivalence between nineteen eighty-four and Dong Leshan’s translation (Unpublished master thesis). Beijing: Beijing Foreign Languages University.




DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3968/8671

Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.


Copyright (c) 2016 Keli LI, Yufang Ho

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Share us to:   

 

Online Submission: http://cscanada.org/index.php/sll/submission/wizard


Reminder

How to do online submission to another Journal?

If you have already registered in Journal A, then how can you submit another article to Journal B? It takes two steps to make it happen:

1. Register yourself in Journal B as an Author

Find the journal you want to submit to in CATEGORIES, click on “VIEW JOURNAL”, “Online Submissions”, “GO TO LOGIN” and “Edit My Profile”. Check “Author” on the “Edit Profile” page, then “Save”.

2. Submission

Go to “User Home”, and click on “Author” under the name of Journal B. You may start a New Submission by clicking on “CLICK HERE”.


We only use three mailboxes as follows to deal with issues about paper acceptance, payment and submission of electronic versions of our journals to databases: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]

 Articles published in Studies in Literature and Language are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC-BY).

 STUDIES IN LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE Editorial Office

Address: 1055 Rue Lucien-L'Allier, Unit #772, Montreal, QC H3G 3C4, Canada.
Telephone: 1-514-558 6138 
Website: Http://www.cscanada.net; Http://www.cscanada.org 
E-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]

Copyright © 2010 Canadian Academy of Oriental and Occidental Culture