Reframed narrativity in literary translation: an investigation of the explicitation of cohesive chains

Explicitation is a key concept in translation studies referring to turning what is implicitly narrated in a source text into explicit narration in a target text; it has been widely studied from different aspects across language pairs and genres. However, while most previous studies investigate explicitation through a few indicators of explicitness, most of which are specific logical links and connectives, textual explicitness encompasses far beyond these. To date, little attention has been paid, especially in literary translation, to semantic explicitation, which is realized through cohesive chains in textual development. Since cohesive chains represent the development of events and characters throughout the text, it is assumed the more there are of them, the more tangible a text is in realizing its meaning within its context. This research, therefore, sets out to investigate the cohesive chains in a Chinese classic novel, Hong Lou Meng, and in its two English translations, The Dream of the Red Mansions and A Story of the Stone, with an emphasis on how the texts are manifested as narratives in the respective contexts with different readers. It has found a trend of explicitation in translation from Chinese source text to English target texts in terms of the numbers of cohesive chains and the lexical items forming the chains. It has also found differences in the distribution of different types of cohesive chains (identity chains and similarity chains), which represent distinctive patterns of realizing the context in each text. The interpretation of these different stylistic features in narrative reflects both typological differences and translators’ choices.

Translation of Narrative Voice and Reproduction of a Simulated Storytelling Mode

Chinese vernacular fiction is characterized by a simulated storytelling mode through which the narrator manipulates narration and facilitates interaction with the reader. There is little research on the representation of this distinctive Chinese narrative mode across languages and cultures. Recently scholars in translation studies have begun to focus on how different types and levels of voice are represented in translated texts. The present article investigates how the overt voice of the simulated storyteller characterizing the Chinese vernacular narrative style is represented in three complete English translations of a Chinese classic entitled Shuihu Zhuan. The article includes a comparative study of how the storyteller-narrator manifests his narrative voice through storytelling formulae and rhetorical narratorial questions and more importantly, on how the storyteller-narrator’s voice has been rendered by different translators. Besides, by relating the reproduction of narrative voice to translatorship, it shows that the professional role and status of each translator influence their strategy-making as to whether, and to what extent, the narrative voice of the source text should be reconstructed.

The Thinking Model of English Translations of Chinese Classic Poetry

The thinking model of English translations of Chinese classic poetry is an unsettled issue both in theory and in practice. Based on different English translation versions of Ru Meng Ling by Li Qingzhao this research explores the thinking model and its transcendence and transform in Chinese classic poetry translation, concludes three thinking model: conceptual thinking model, imagistic thinking model and imaginary thinking model.

Thinking Path Schema of English Translation for Chinese Classics: An Empirical Study on Translation Schema in Translation Courses

In view of the complicated translation cognitive process, the study investigated and compared students’ translation process of Chinese Classics through translation thinking path schema. Seventy-six participants learning translation courses based on parallel level in two classes of one Chinese university, some of them trained for four months intentionally, were involved into some translation experiments with selected ancient Chinese classic poems. By the form of discussions, cooperation, or individual written translation, data were gathered from manuscripts, answer sheets, video recordings, think-aloud questionnaires, reflection papers, and interviews, which were integrated and categorized into the process classification evaluation tables in qualitative and quantitative analysis for the empirical study. Through some visible comparing and contrasted data elucidation, results indicated the obvious advantages of making use of the thinking path schema in Chinese Classics translation among trained students, who have presented more diversified translation thinking courses and superior evaluation scores in general. What’s more, author could be regarded as an element considered into the angle of translator, but not an independent angle as other non-Chinese-classic-text translation process, amending the former thinking path schema. Furthermore, the conclusions and amendments after translation experiments could be considered into the dynamic translation process for Chinese classics.

The Heart Admonition of the Ancient Chinese Classic Shujing: An Episode from History of Its Interpretation in the West and Russia

Autochthonous traditional Chinese thought in its most developed form could be found in the philosophy of Neo-Confucianism, which continues to be a sig­nificant factor in the modern national consciousness of the Chinese people. At the same time, the pre-emptive attention of Western Sinology and Russian Chinese studies to early Confucianism does not fully take into account the Neo-Confucian interpretation of the ancient Chinese classics. Russian and Western translations of the so-called Sixteen-Word Heart Admonition (Shi liu zi xin chuan), a passage from Chapter III “Da Yu mo” (Councel of Yu the Great) of the ancient Chinese classic The Book of Historical Documents (Shujing) by A. Gaubil, N.Ya. Bichurin, D.P. Sivillov, W.H. Medhurst, J. Legge, S. Couvreur, and W.G. Old demonstrate the gradual assimilation of its Neo-Confucian inter­pretation by Western and Russian translators. Archimandrite Daniil (Dmitry P. Sivillov), in his unpublished Russian translation of Shujing of the early 1840s, adopted this interpretation earlier and understood it better than the others. It is assumed that rejection of the Manchu language mediation and peruse of the con­temporary Neo-Confucian commentaries played the key role in his success. The importance of Neo-Confucian hermeneutics research for the studies of tradi­tional Chinese philosophy, including ancient Chinese classics, is emphasized. The text of the previously unpublished Shujing Chapter III Da Yu mo Russian transla­tion by archimandrite Daniil is attached.

On Translation of Social Terms in Hong Lou Meng

Translation is a bridge that leads different language speakers to understand each other. Translation of literature works, particularly those with large numbers of cultural elements, is the concern of translatology and many researchers. The Chinese classic novel Hong Lou Meng is right the case. This paper compares some cases in the address term translation in two different versions of translation, namely Yang Xianyi’s and David Hawks’, and tries to analyze them in combination with Lawrence Venuti’s theory of domestication and foreignization.