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Research
Volume 14, Numbers 1 & 2 (2011)
  Unsuspected Introductions in Translated Texts: A Case Study on Wu Zhuoliu's Orphan of Asia 1
  Jennifer Junwa LAU  
 
  The Missing Puzzle Piece in Translation Pedagogy: Adaptive and Elastic Competence 17
  Grace Qiao ZHANG  
 
  Ellipses, Conjunctions and Substitutions; Which One Becomes Explicit in the Process of Translation? 37
  Reza YALSHARZEH  
 
  口譯研究五十年綜述:回顧與展望 53
  張威  
 
  《中華人民共和國企業破產法》的英譯失誤舉隅 77
  劉正兵  
 
  蔡思果翻譯生涯鉤沉 97
  張宇傑  
 
  翻譯中的女性話語權:探析話語權力、女性主義寫作與翻譯之關係 117
  劉劍雯  
 
  Notes on Contributors 143
 
  Notice to Contributors 145
 
  Special Issues Guidelines  
 
  Ethics Statements  
Unsuspected Introductions in Translated Texts: A Case Study on Wu Zhuoliu's Orphan of Asia
Jennifer Junwa LAU

In this article, the author examines the prefacing of the translation of Wu Zhuoliu's Orphan of Asia in relation to the notion of Orientalism, first exploring the rewriting of prefaces as a type of Orientalism, by studying the differences between the Chinese and English introductory paratexts. The author questions whether scholars can move away from this prefacing system that produces uneven knowledge. Orientalism, as defined by Edward Said (1978a, 3), is "a Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient." Said's argument extends beyond his original focus of the Middle East as Oriental. For scholars of East Asian studies, Orientalism is also a familiar term. In Dru C. Gladney's (1994, 94) discussion of national representation in China, the term "oriental Orientalism" is coined to address internal Orientalism. This examination of Orphan of Asia demonstrates how preface writing is a powerful producer of knowledge, and the author argues that Orientalist notions are intermingled within the practice of preface writing. Because Orphan of Asia has multiple translations, it has multiple introductions as well. Hence, it is meaningful to examine these texts and the treatment of the original introductions. It is especially noteworthy that the two former Chinese editions of the classic include a translation of the original Japanese preface and a rewritten Chinese preface, while the English edition presents a new foreword. These trilingual paratexts serve as primary texts, which are taken from the Chinese (1977)1 and the English (2006) renditions.

References

Said, Edward (1978a). Introduction." In Orientalism. New York: Random House, 1–28.

Gladney, Dru C. (1994). "Representing Nationality in China: Refiguring Majority/Minority Identities." Journal of Asian Studies 53.1, 92–123.

1 Each edition of the Chinese text (1962, 1977, 2008) includes at least one of Wu Zhuoliu's own prefaces. It should be noted that in the 2008 edition, only the Chinese preface is included, but it is accompanied by five introductions by five different individuals and a translator's note. This is why the 1977 edition was chosen over the 2008 translation.

The Missing Puzzle Piece in Translation Pedagogy: Adaptive and Elastic Competence
Grace Qiao ZHANG

The study of effective and innovative translation pedagogy has been drawing increasing attention in recent years, but the training of adaptive and elastic competence is somewhat overlooked. This study investigates the importance of strategic translation through the theoretical lens of Verschueren's (1998) Adaptation Theory. The analysis is based on a case study of the 2001 Sino-American Hainan airplane collision crisis, and in particular the pivotal role of different versions of the American "two sorries" letter in facilitating the resolution. It highlights the need to incorporate language adaptation and the interests of all parties in a translation. This study argues that translation is a negotiable and adaptable process, influenced by both overt and covert components, and that this process should be reflected in translation education by fostering the ability to get behind the text to cater to the interests of all interested parties: that is, to cultivate adaptive and elastic competence. The findings suggest that a realistic, balanced, and robust account of adaptation and elasticity is needed for effective translation education.

References

Verschueren, Jef (1998). Understanding Pragmatics. London: Arnold.

Ellipses, Conjunctions and Substitutions; Which One Becomes Explicit in the Process of Translation?
Reza YALSHARZEH

It is widely believed in the field of translation studies that explicitation is one of the universals of translation. As Blum-Kulka (2001) and Baker (1996) depicted, all translated texts exhibit a higher degree of explicitness than nontranslated target-language texts of a comparable type. Moreover, as noted by Blum-Kulka (2001), translated texts are cohesively more explicit than nontranslated texts. Numerous studies done in the field of translation studies have proved this long-standing stance. These studies include Baker and Olohan (2000) and Papai (2001), just to name a few. However, very few studies have shown the proportion of each cohesive marker’s level of explicitness to the total level of explicitness of a text. This study is an attempt to show which cohesive markers, according to Halliday’s notion of cohesion in English, tend to be more explicit and which cohesive markers tend to be less explicit in the translated texts. In order to carry out the study, a corpus of over 85,000 words was chosen. All of the instances of cohesive markers, that is, ellipses, substitutions, and conjunctions, were identified in the original texts. After that, the ways in which the translators encountered these cohesive markers were studied. Finally, it is reported that the cohesive markers do not behave the same when undergoing the process of explicitation. The results of the present study suggest that conjunctions tend to be more explicit in translated texts than other cohesive markers in English to Persian translation.

References

Baker, M. (1996). "Linguistics and Cultural Studies: Complementary or Competing Paradigms in Translation Studies?" In Angelika Lauer, Heidrun Gerrzymisch Arboyast, Johann Haller, and Erich Steiner (eds.) Übersetzungswissenschaft im Umbruch: Festschrift für Wolfram Wilss. Tübingen: Gunt er Narr, 9–19.

Baker, M. and M. Olohan (2000). "Reporting That in Translated English: Evidence for Subconscious Processes of Explicitation?"Across Languages and Cultures 1.2, 141–58.

Blum-Kulka, S. (2001). "Shifts of Cohesion and Coherence in Translation." In Lawrence Venuti (ed.) The Translation Studies Reader. London: Routledge, 98–312.

Papai, V. (2001). "Universals of translated texts. Az explicitacios hipotezis vizsgalata angol-magyar es Magyar-magyar parhuzamos korpuszok egybevetesevel" [Investigating the explicitation hypothesis using English–Hungarian and Hungarian–Hungarian corpora]. Unpublished diss., Gyor-Pecs.

口譯研究五十年綜述:回顧與展望*
Fifty Years in Interpreting Studies: Reviews and Prospects
張威
ZHANG Wei

口譯研究是一個新興的研究領域,在國內外正引起不同領域人員的持續關注。中外口譯研究的相同之處主要表現在共同的發展歷程、相近的研究特點、類似的難題和困惑等方面;同時,在研究主題、研究焦點、實施方法、理論構建、研究人員等方面,中外口譯研究又存在著明顯差異,而且也可以從社會環境、研究環境與機制、學術傳統、研究價值取向等方面探究其形成原因。基於上述分析,在指導原則、研究範圍、方法學等環節上,中國口譯研究應該有更明確的發展戰略,以保證口譯研究的健康發展。

As a newly-born area of research, the interpreting studies are now attracting increasing concerns in various fields at home and abroad. Some similarities between the interpreting researches in China and those in other countries can be shown in historical stages, research characteristics, and problems and confusion. And the interpreting studies at home and abroad also differ greatly in research topics, research focuses, methodology, theorizing, and researchers’ identity, which can be attributed to such factors as social setting, research mechanism, academic tradition, and research purpose. These analyses will generate some strategic considerations in guiding principle, research scope, and methodology for a sound growth of interpreting researches in China.

 

*教育部人文社會科學基金專案「同聲傳譯的工作記憶模型研究」(10YJC740134);全國優秀博士學位論文作者專項資金資助專案「大型漢英/英漢口譯語料庫的創建及應用研究(1)」(201014)。

《中華人民共和國企業破產法》的英譯失誤舉隅
An Illustration of the Problems with the English Version of The Law of the People's Republic of China on Enterprise Bankruptcy
劉正兵
LIU Zhengbing

精準是法律文書行文用詞的靈魂。在翻譯法律文書的過程中,譯者有義務和責任將原文本中的內容和形式精確地傳譯入目的語。然而,筆者發現,作為一部重要的法律文書,《中華人民共和國企業破產法》的英譯文卻存在大量的行文措辭不佳、單詞拼寫、字母大小寫、語法和句法錯誤以及用語不專業等諸多缺憾。本文作者通過舉例說明該法英譯文中存在的種種問題,指出譯者的工作責任心不強、英語行文能力不佳和缺乏必要的相關比較法學知識是造成上述錯誤的主要原因,作者同時也指出,作為單一語言國家,中國缺乏對翻譯市場與譯文質量的監控也是中國目前各種文本英文翻譯(包括法律文本翻譯)常出錯的重要原因。

Fidelity and expressiveness are the two key prerequisites for the translation of legal documents. Accurately and idiomatically rendering the original source-language information into the target language is the liability and responsibility of a translator undertaking the legal documents' translation. However, the official English translation of The Law of the People's Republic of China on Enterprise Bankruptcy, published by the China Legal Publishing House does not seem to adhere to the aforementioned essential criteria, fidelity and expressiveness, for the English version of this law contains many problems such as misspelled and misprinted letters and words, unidiomatic expressions, incorrect grammar and awkward sentence structures, overtranslation and undertranslation, and others, ostensibly because the translator lacks a sense of responsibility, has poor English writing skills, and is ignorant of legal jargon. The appearance of all of these problems in the English translation of this Law undermines the effects of the global publicity of the original law's content, which is of worldwide significance. The author of this article therefore believes that the original law deserves a better, more accurate English translation.

蔡思果翻譯生涯鉤沉
Frederick Tsai as a Translator: A Biographical Sketch
張宇傑
Yu-kit CHEUNG

蔡思果(1918–2004)是當代散文家、翻譯家,聲名籍甚。在四十多年的翻譯生涯裏,翻譯了書籍二十餘本,短篇故事、單篇散文、詩歌共約六十篇,成績斐然。其翻譯妥貼而地道,甚具口碑。翻譯之餘,也研究翻譯。他以純正中文為骨幹的翻譯觀膾炙人口。他部分討論翻譯的專著,數十年來重印不絕。此外,蔡氏也是翻譯老師、文學翻譯批評家。思果雖然在中文譯壇名重望隆,至今卻未有專文探討其翻譯事業、評析其翻譯作品。本文將考諸載籍,爬疏其翻譯生涯,以對其翻譯事業作初步探研。

Frederick Tsai (1918–2004) was a famous essayist and translator in Hong Kong. He was one of the few local translators who were also translation teachers, literary translation scholars, and literary translation critics. In a translation career spanning over forty years, he translated over twenty books and around sixty poems and short stories published in literary journals. His translations are widely acknowledged as both idiomatically accurate and faithful. In addition to performing translations, Tsai published four books on translation studies, in which he strongly advocated a sense of Chineseness in Chinese translation—to employ the existing Chinese structures, phrases, and so on as far as possible to avoid translationese. His books have been well received and are deemed essential introductory reading in practical translation. As much as Tsai is a luminary in the field of translation, not much academic attention, if any at all, has been paid to him as a person, to his Chinese translations, and to his achievements as a translator. This essay unearths Tsai's life as a translator, serving as a preliminary step in investigating his translation career and achievements.

翻譯中的女性話語權:探析話語權力、女性主義寫作與翻譯之關係
The Transmission of Female Power in Translation
劉劍雯
LIU Jianwen

本文介紹福柯的話語權力理論,論述理論如何影響並運用到女性主義及翻譯中。文章也探析話語權力與女性主義寫作及翻譯的聯繫,並指出女性主義寫作表現女性話語權,而在女性主義寫作的翻譯中,翻譯可以用來傳遞和強調女性話語權,也可以用來維護男性話語權。

This article introduces Foucault’s power/discourse theory and discusses its application to feminism and translation studies. This article also argues that the female power that is embodied in the feminist source text can be strengthened or weakened by the work undertaken by translators in the translation process.