In his positive approach to translation studies featured in this highly original volume, Chunshen Zhu brings into perspective from the vantage point of translation the workings of human factors in text production, interpretation, and dissemination in and through translation in varying social situations.
In his positive approach to translation studies featured in this highly original volume, Chunshen Zhu brings into perspective from the vantage point of translation the workings of human factors in text production, interpretation, and dissemination in and through translation in varying social situations.
This book examines a variety of key issues heatedly debated or largely neglected in the field of translation studies and beyond, for example, meaning making, nature of the Unit of Translation, augmentation of transitivity by modification, signification of repetition, and cognitive effects of syntactic iconicity, by critically engaging insights from functional linguistics and philosophy of language, among other fields of study. These issue-driven, phenomenon-focused, and theorization-oriented studies, presented in eight chapters with ample exemplification and case studies, form a coherent whole to bring a network of correlations between theory and practice, linguistics and literature, form and content, information structure and communicative function, intention and effect, and textuality and experience to bear upon the study of translation, fathoming its depths not only as a linguistic operation but more significantly as a textually accountable process of intersubjective and cross-lingual sign making that facilitates humans understanding of themselves and of the world.
The book is therefore a useful reference for scholars, teachers, and postgraduate and research students who are interested in a comprehensive yet focused approach to translation as an academic subject straddling linguistics and literary, cultural, and social studies, as well as for those who would like to observe bilingualism and cross-cultural communication through translation in general and translation involving the Chinese language in particular.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
Chapter One
Introduction: Towards a positive study of translation
3+1 childhood diseases
Theory
Theories or turns
Relativity of validity
Bourdieus language theory revisited
Insights from Friedman and Iser
1.6.1 Friedmans (1953) characterization of positive economics outlined
1.6.2 Isers (2006) conceptual framework of critical theory outlined
Positive translation studies
Between theory and practice: Theorization and application
About this book
Chapter Two
Structure of Meaning (SOM): Making of meaning and Triggering of discursive
experience
2.1 Preamble
2.2 Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL): Translation as text re-creation
2.3 Speech acts: Intentionality in translation
2.4 Structure of Meaning: An integrated three-dimensional model of meaning
making
2.4.1 The compositional dimension
2.4.2 The interactional dimension
2.4.3 The experiential dimension
2.5 Relationships between the dimensions of SOM
2.5.1 Dimensions of SOM: A generic view
2.5.2 SOM: Form and substance
2.6 Translation: A discursive experience in three dimensions
2.7 Summary
Chapter Three
From structure to experience: Meaning making in translation
3.1 Preamble
3.2 What we have understood about translation: A brief overview
3.3 Sense, meaning, and meaning making
3.4 Dynamics of meaning making: Ingardens conception of moments
3.5 Reading and experiencing: A tryout
3.6 Experiment with focus management in translation
3.6.1 A linguistics text in translation
3.6.2 The opening sentence of The Old Man and the Sea in Chinese translation
3.6.3 A linguistics text in translation re-examined: Management of
information focus
3.7 Discussion and conclusion
Chapter Four
The Sentence as Unit of Translation (UT): From function to experience
4.1 Preamble
4.2 Between text and sentence: UT redefined
4.3 Case study one: Within and beyond a sentence
4.4 Case study two: From sentence to text
4.4.1 Textual integrity of sentences in the source text
4.4.2 A translation experiment from the perspective of textual integrity
4.5 Discussion and conclusion
Chapter Five
Augmentation of transitivity: Modification and attention management in
translation
5.1 Att- and adv-modification: A preliminary framework
5.2 Modification: To indicate, to describe, or to define
5.3 Comparability between att- and adv-modification in attention management
5.4 Modification: Information distribution and attention management
5.5. From external to internal modification: Looking into a word
5.5.1 Meaning structured in a word
5.5.2 Internal modifiers: Morphemic and sememic
5.6. From morphemic to sememic modification: Looking into a morpheme
5.6.1 Word meaning development and its implications for translation
5.6.2 Skewed correspondence and its implications for translation
5.7 False and pseudo morphemic modifiers
5.7.1 False morphemic modifiers
5.7.2 Pseudo morphemic modifiers
5.8 Attention management and manipulation through modification: Three case
examples
5.8.1 Angry Birds, Twelve Angry Men, etc.
5.8.2 The Wife
5.8.3steel deatt qin
5.9 Summary
Chapter Six
Touching base with text: Repetition and signification in translation
6.1 Preamble
6.2 What kind of linguistics?
6.3 Why (not) literary texts and literary translation?
6.4 Leitmotif as VTU in literary translation: The mapping of a textual
network
6.5 Operation of leitmotif as VTU: Case examples
6.5.1 From Chinese translations of John Galsworthys The Apple Tree
6.5.2 From Chinese translations of F. Scott Fitzgeralds The Great Gatsby
6.6 Discussion: Textual network, effect, and apurposiveness of literary
translating
6.6.1 Accountability for the network of signification: Leitmotif as VTU
6.6.2 The apurposiveness of artistic creation: From illocutionary to
perlocutionary
6.7 Conclusion
Chapter Seven
Language in action: Syntactic iconicity and translation
7.1 Of arbitrariness and iconicity: From language to text
7.2 Syntactic iconicity: Form, function, effect
7.3 Iconicity as foreignization in creative writing: Wang Mengs The Eye
of Night
7.3.1 Case One: Iconicity of short sentences
7.3.2 Case Two: Iconicity in a long sentence
7.4 Iconic in translation: To be, or not to be
7.5 Conclusion
Chapter Eight
Deceptive language and conflict of experience: Text (re)production and
dissemination through translation
8.1 Situation, culture and text (re)production
8.1.1 Relating skill to situation
8.1.2 Culture: Its behavioural dimension of tool making
8.1.3 From tool making to sign making
8.1.4 Text as sign
8.1.5 Cultural awareness in text (re)production and dissemination
8.2 Text (re)production and dissemination: A case study
8.2.1 The historical situation of the source text production
8.2.2 A present-day situation of translation
8.3 Critique and discussion
8.3.1 The translation as a primary sign
8.3.2 The translation as a secondary sign
8.4 Conclusion
Index
Chunshen Zhu is currently Professor of Translation Studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (Shenzhen), Honorary Research Fellow at the Centre for Translation, Hong Kong Baptist University, and Adjunct Professor at Xian Jiaotong-Liverpool University. Prior to this, he was a professor at the City University of Hong Kong.
