Book Review

The significance of Patterson's work Understanding Metaphor Through Corpora: A Case Study of Metaphors in Nineteenth Century Writing is that only through corpus linguistics have we been able to apply real empirical evidence to our arguments of what metaphor is. By demonstrating that metaphor is supposed to be approached from a linguistic perspective along with a psycholinguistic one, Patterson succeeds in drawing readers' attention to the efficacy and the benefits of combining corpus linguistic methodology with the theory of lexical priming. Thus, the volume is an essential reader for students and researchers in corpus linguistics, metaphor studies, lexicography, semantics, and pragmatics.

In Other Words

This empirical study takes a cognitive perspective and examines the translation of metaphors in speeches by Chinese President Xi Jinping as collected in the first volume of the book The Governance of China published in 2014. The study draws upon Lakoff and Johnson's conceptual metaphor theory and Newmark's categories of translation procedure for metaphors. The researchers' data analysis has shown that (1) four out of the eight existing translation procedures for metaphors are employed in translating Xi's metaphors, and (2) while the use of one translation procedure reflects similar cognitive mapping conditions between the source and the target culture, the use of the other procedures does not always correlate with the similarities or differences in cognitive mappings between the two cultures in question. The research raises new inquiries regarding metaphor translation, and the researchers accordingly discuss the implications of their findings for metaphor translation pedagogy and future translation studies.

Exploring the Effect of Syntactic Alignment on Chinese-English Bilinguals' Code-switched Sentence Production

As one of the most common language phenomena in bilingual settings, code-switching has been studied widely to explore its nature and features. In the current study, the author set out to explore the effect of syntactic alignment on Chinese-English bilinguals' code-switched sentence production using a picture-describing task with a structural priming paradigm. The structural priming paradigm has been frequently used to explore the mechanisms of sentence production. The effect of syntactic alignment was observed, indicating Chinese-English bilinguals were inclined to produce code-switched sentences with the same syntactic structure between Chinese and English. The findings provide empirical evidence not only supporting structural priming during bilingual code-switched sentence production, but also extending the interactive alignment model (Pickering and Garrod, 2004) to interpret code-switching during bilingual sentence production. Implications for code-switching and bilingual sentence processing are discussed.

How Much “Translation” Is in Localization and Global Adaptation?

The aim of this article is to contribute to the discourse by clarifying the extent to which complex intersemiotic action can still be regarded as translation. This will be shown by two of its major representatives (i.e., localization and [global] adaptation), both of which constitute contested issues in translation studies research with regard to their conceptual belonging. Functional translation theory will be employed to achieve this aim. Employing functional translation theory will show that the decisive criterion for the conceptual affiliation of any intersemiotic action to translation is whether or not it constitutes a predominantly language-based text-to-text transfer. Finally, given its successful implementation, this paper proposes functionalist skopos theory as one possible interdisciplinary methodological tool for intersemiotic action that is not only useful for translation studies but could also be useful, if accordingly adapted, for other neighboring disciplines, such as, for example, adaptation studies.

A Better Medical Interpreting Service

Medical interpreting has become a new research focus in recent decades, but few studies have discussed the role of interpreter in combination with strategies. This paper aims to work out how a medical interpreter plays his or her role and adopts strategies when interpreting between English and Chinese. Based on a first-hand medical interpreting corpus, this empirical study tagged the interpretation and made a detailed analysis of the interpreter's role and strategies. The results revealed that under the guideline of Goffman's participation framework theory the medical interpreter facilitated the therapeutic talk via three roles, namely “animator,” “author,” “principal”; for each role, different interpreting strategies, like “supplement,” “omission,” “compression,” etc. were adopted. Moreover, the study found motives behind interpreting strategies under the specific context. The sociological discussions are presented in the hope of enhancing medical interpreters' understanding of their roles and the importance of adopting more flexible strategies in order to provide better service.

Paratext Analysis of Patronage Factors

Drawing on André Lefevere's rewriting theory, this paper endeavours to explore how Howard Goldblatt translates Mo Yan's novel Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out (hereafter referred to as L&D) with regard to patronage control by way of paratext analysis. Seven categories of patronage factors, including original author, translator, literary cooperative, publisher and editor, market expectancy, literary agent, and target reader, are identified as the objective of paratext analysis. Paratext analysis of these patronage factors provides greater insights into the unique attributes of Goldblatt's translation. The results show that apart from adhering to the target ideological and poetological currents in his translation, Goldblatt also excels in mediating between various patronage factors, striving to seek a balance among external power constraints, and finally producing a translation geared to the reader's expectation.

A Critical Study on Translation of the Analects

“Ideology” shapes our discourse practices and is closely related to the translation activities. This paper attempts to explore how ideological factors influence the cultural transmission of Confucianism through a comparative analysis of the three versions of the great Chinese classical works the Analects that are translated by Raymond Dawson, Ames and Rosemont, and Edward Slingerland. In this comparative study, the paper focuses on the important role of the ideology in the process of translating the Analects through a discussion of the possible reasons behind the translation strategies. The paper concludes with a consideration of how ideology imposes on translation for cultural communication, negotiation, and transformation. It is hoped to demonstrate the ideological influences on the translated works, provide useful suggestions for the translation of Chinese classical works, and promote the international dialogue between China and the Western world.

Grammatical Metaphor in English-Chinese Translation

This paper aims to apply grammatical metaphor (GM) in systemic functional linguistics (SFL) into translation studies. From the concept of functional equivalence in terms of ideational meaning, interpersonal meaning, and textual meaning required of target text (TT) relative to source text (ST) proposed by SFL, it is necessary for the translators to manipulate respectively on the transitivity system, mood system, modality system, and theme system that embody ideational meaning, interpersonal meaning, and textual meaning. Since the same meaning can be expressed in different grammatical structures, the translators, in this process, are faced with a variety of grammatical forms, among which congruent form and metaphorical form are included. To attain the goal of translation prescribed above, the translator has to choose an accurate and appropriate structure. The article then discusses the necessity and effects of GM's application into English to Chinese translation to ensure the quality of the works translated.

Making Connections Through Knowledge Nodes in Translator Training

This study defines translator training as a pedagogical scheme to help learners build up a knowledge network that should sustain their professional competence. It explores specifically how a computer-assisted mode of training may contribute to systemizing such a scheme with special reference to literary translation. The tool used for such training is Textwells, an online translation teaching and learning platform that weaves textual and translation-related concepts, phenomena, and methods as “knowledge nodes” into a network to support teaching and learning in different settings. As such, different from the traditional way of arranging a literary translation course according to the subgenres of literature, this approach, facilitated by the online platform, organizes the teaching contents along a series of knowledge nodes that are deemed fundamental to the production of a literary target text. In particular, this paper gives a detailed report about the course design and teaching procedures, using the rhetoric component as an illustrating case.