Key Issues in Translation Studies in China: Reflections and New Insights [1st ed.] 9789811558641, 9789811558658

Table of contents :
Front Matter ....Pages i-xv
Chinese Translation Discourse—Traditional and Contemporary Features of Development (Zaixi Tan)....Pages 1-27
Teaching Translation and Culture (Yifeng Sun)....Pages 29-45
Translation Teaching Research in the Chinese Mainland (1978–2018): Theory, Method and Development (Youlan Tao, Hui Wen, Shuhuai Wang)....Pages 47-76
Pragmatics and Chinese Translation (Vincent X. Wang)....Pages 77-90
Cognitive Processing Routes of Culture-Specific Linguistic Metaphors in Simultaneous Interpreting (Yue Lang, Defeng Li)....Pages 91-109
From Faithfulness to Information Quality: On 信 in Translation Studies (Chu-Ren Huang, Xiaowen Wang)....Pages 111-142
Interpreting Training in China: Past, Present, and Future (Lily Lim)....Pages 143-159
Translation and Interpreting Assessment Schemes: NAATI Versus CATTI (Leong Ko)....Pages 161-194

Citation preview

New Frontiers in Translation Studies

Lily Lim Defeng Li   Editors

Key Issues in Translation Studies in China Reflections and New Insights

New Frontiers in Translation Studies Series Editor Defeng Li Center for Studies of Translation, Interpreting and Cognition, University of Macau, Macao SAR, China

Translation Studies as a discipline has witnessed the fastest growth in the last 40 years. With translation becoming increasingly more important in today’s glocalized world, some have even observed a general translational turn in humanities in recent years. The New Frontiers in Translation Studies aims to capture the newest developments in translation studies, with a focus on: • Translation Studies research methodology, an area of growing interest amongst translation students and teachers; • Data-based empirical translation studies, a strong point of growth for the discipline because of the scientific nature of the quantitative and/or qualitative methods adopted in the investigations; and • Asian translation thoughts and theories, to complement the current Eurocentric translation studies. Submission and Peer Review: The editor welcomes book proposals from experienced scholars as well as young aspiring researchers. Please send a short description of 500 words to the editor Prof. Defeng Li at Springernfi[email protected] and Springer Senior Publishing Editor Rebecca Zhu: [email protected]. All proposals will undergo peer review to permit an initial evaluation. If accepted, the final manuscript will be peer reviewed internally by the series editor as well as externally (single blind) by Springer ahead of acceptance and publication.

More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/11894

Lily Lim Defeng Li •

Editors

Key Issues in Translation Studies in China Reflections and New Insights

123

Editors Lily Lim School of Languages and Translation Macao Polytechnic Institute Macao, China

Defeng Li Faculty of Arts and Humanities University of Macau Macao, China

ISSN 2197-8689 ISSN 2197-8697 (electronic) New Frontiers in Translation Studies ISBN 978-981-15-5864-1 ISBN 978-981-15-5865-8 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-5865-8 © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721, Singapore

Acknowledgements

We would like to express sincere thanks to Prof. Li Defeng, Series Editor of New Frontiers in Translation Studies, for his full support and tangible advice throughout the process of completing this edited volume. Our appreciation extends to the whole supporting team of Springer, including Vidyaa Kumar, Rebecca Zhu, Carolyn Zhang, Nobuko Hirota, for their efficient communication and professional handling of the publishing matters, so that this volume can be kept on track from the initial stage to the final printing. We are very grateful to all the anonymous reviewers who have provided their very constructive comments and suggestions that contributed so much to the quality of the volume. Without any doubt, we are deeply indebted to all our contributors, who presented their original research and cast new insights in this volume. Our readers can now benefit from their expertise developed over the decades on numerous key issues in translation studies. Our heartfelt thanks go to all individuals involved in the compilation of this volume.

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Introduction: Key Issues and New Insights

The reform and opening-up of China in the 1970s brought forth challenges and opportunities for the nation’s economic growth and social changes. Over the four decades since, China has been engaged in negotiation, exchanges, cooperation and collaborations with partners across the globe in a full spectrum of areas—e.g., diplomacy and military, legal affairs, trade and commerce, science and technology, tourism, entertainment and cultural creativity. This led to a huge demand for translation and interpreting services, transforming language services into a booming industry with massive revenues and immense employment opportunities. On a par with the industry’s expansion, translation studies have experienced unprecedented development in China. Now right into the new millennium and in view of the rise of China in a world pushed by fast-changing technologies, it is timely for scholars of the field to look back the decades of translation studies (TS) development in China and look into the future for the directions our discipline is moving into. In the eight chapters of this volume, the contributors address a range of key themes such as TS as a discipline and its essential properties, translator and interpreter training, curriculum design and assessment, linguistic analysis of translation and interpreters’ cognitive processing routes. In Chapter “Chinese Translation Discourse—Traditional and Contemporary Features of Development,” Zaixi Tan presents a useful outline of the development of CTS, offering visions and original thoughts on the future developments of the discipline. The chapter revisits the major stages (especially “landmarks” in the author’s word) of the development of Chinese TS and addresses the central debate topics/areas and the consensus reached, and the most representative scholarly positions on CTS—i.e., the traditionalist, universalist and discourse-oriented ones. Tam elaborates on his thoughts on Chineseness in TS, e.g., in terms of (a) the need to include the present time (rather than focusing on the past) and (b) the relevance of broader theoretical insights that operate in or relate to Chinese contexts. Tam’s thoughts are of much value for sound developments of CTS in many ways. The culture dimension in translator training is closely re-examined in Chapter “Teaching Translation and Culture.” Yifeng Sun notes that the cultural turn of TS in the 1980s has profound implications for translation pedagogy. He argues vii

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for the need for fostering cross-cultural awareness, knowledge and sensitivity in translation curriculum, illustrating the competence required with vivid translation examples. Sun further draws pedagogical implications in response to the present challenges imposed by artificial intelligence on human translation, suggesting that translation programs should be (re)designed to equip translators with a heightened cultural awareness and insight about the complex and dialogical nature of cultural differences embedded in the nuances of both source and target languages. Further to Sun’s recommendation for heightening cultural awareness in translation pedagogy, Chapter “Translation Teaching Research in the Chinese Mainland (1978–2018): Theory, Method and Development” by Youlan Tao, Hui Wen and Shuhuai Wang looks at tertiary-level translation and interpreting pedagogy in terms of recent development (1978–2018) and the objectives and approaches of the training. The chapter systematically reviews a range of areas in translation teaching in China, backed with rich quantitative results. Tao, Wen and Wang effectively depict the trends of publications, in particular with reference to prominent theoretical frameworks. The chapter offers valuable critical comments on the past and provides insights for future development. Chapter “Pragmatics and Chinese Translation” delves into linguistic pragmatics, which is indeed an important dimension that needs to be taken into account in translation and translation studies. Vincent Wang surveys the studies on pragmatics and translation conducted by Chinese scholars, classifying the studies into two broad categories—pragmatics as perspective and pragmatics as behavior. In the case study, Wang provides a fine-grained speech–act analysis in an excerpt of Pygmalion. The aim of showcasing this type of analysis seems to be encouraging rigidly theory-guided in-depth investigations into the pragmatic aspects of translation so that substantial advances in this field can be attained. Chapter “Cognitive Processing Routes of Culture-Specific Linguistic Metaphors in Simultaneous Interpreting” by Yue Lang and Defeng Li showcases the frontier research on interpreters’ mental processes. It contributes to the recent studies on interpreters’ cognitive processing routes, especially on the processes associated with deverbalization and conceptual meditation. Lang and Li conducted a sophistically designed and systematically conducted experiment, and the results showed that the vertical route is preferred by professional interpreters to render culture-specific linguistic metaphors (CSMs). The study attests the value of using corpus in cognitive-oriented TS. The chapter by Chu-Ren Huang and Xiaowen Wang (“From Faithfulness to Information Quality: On in 信 Translation Studies”) presents a linguistics-oriented treatment of a perennial issue in translation and translation studies—the quality of xin 信 “faithfulness or loyalty (to the original).” Huang and Wang argue that xin should be understood as being felicitous in context, rather than word-for-word faithfulness. Corpus-based near-synonym studies are used to support the central argument and illustrate the level of information quality that can be possibly reached in translation between English and Chinese. The conceptual metaphor that says “effort is bitterness” in Chinese and “effort is pain” in English allows us to see the difference between ku in Chinese and “pain” in English in a new light. The chapter

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brings in new substance and perspectives of neighboring disciplines to deal with the problem of xin in translation, taking advantage of state-of-the-art corpus analysis methods. From the notion of information quality, subsequent studies can further explore the potential for cross-fertilization, for instance, as demonstrated in the authors’ forthcoming paper that makes use of comparable corpora to tackle thorny problems of equivalence in meaning in translation studies. Chapter “Interpreting Training in China: Past, Present, and Future” by Lily Lim reviews the models of interpreter training in China through the lenses of pedagogical paradigms. Lim observed that the perennial analytic curriculum is the dominant model for textbook-based training in China, which is rational and clearly useful, exhibiting a top-down orientation. However, Lim argues that it should be complemented with down-to-earth practical enquiries, and illustrates this with an example of trainees’ corpus-based queries in preparation for an interpreting assignment, in which inquisitive learning takes place. Lim elaborates on the value of using critical theories, especially Bourdieusian notions of habitus, capital and power, to assist in teasing out the intricate ethical issues in community. This chapter makes useful attempts to bring new perspectives to interpreter training. Chapter “Translation and Interpreting Assessment Schemes: NAATI Versus CATTI” by Leong Ko examines two high-stake qualification tests for translators and interpreters—NAATI (Australia) and CATTI (China). NAATI was established in Australia and recognized in commonwealth countries and beyond. The two tests indeed have deep and far-reaching impact on the translation and interpreting industry. They contribute to determine the cohort of qualified translators and interpreters, and shape the landscape of the training of translators and interpreters inside and outside the tertiary institutions. Ko presents detailed descriptions of the tests in terms of their format, contents and evolutions over time. The chapter provides insightful critique on the potential problems in the tests, identifying important differences between the two tests. The book aims at providing a wide readership including postgraduate students with a useful reference featuring insiders’ account of some current topics and issues of TS in China. It is also valuable for researchers interested in TS in the Chinese context. April 2020

Lily Lim

Contents

Chinese Translation Discourse—Traditional and Contemporary Features of Development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Zaixi Tan Teaching Translation and Culture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Yifeng Sun Translation Teaching Research in the Chinese Mainland (1978–2018): Theory, Method and Development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Youlan Tao, Hui Wen, and Shuhuai Wang Pragmatics and Chinese Translation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Vincent X. Wang Cognitive Processing Routes of Culture-Specific Linguistic Metaphors in Simultaneous Interpreting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Yue Lang and Defeng Li

1 29

47 77

91

From Faithfulness to Information Quality: On 信 in Translation Studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111 Chu-Ren Huang and Xiaowen Wang Interpreting Training in China: Past, Present, and Future . . . . . . . . . . . 143 Lily Lim Translation and Interpreting Assessment Schemes: NAATI Versus CATTI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161 Leong Ko

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Editors and Contributors

About the Editors Lily Lim holds a Ph.D. in applied linguistics (University of Queensland), a master’s degree in software engineering (University of Macao), Certificate of Training Techniques (Escolas da Armada, Portugal) and Certificate of Chinese–Portuguese Interpreting Training (Comissão Europeia). She has been both a practicing interpreting and trainer for conference interpreters for nearly two decades. She is currently Associate Professor and Coordinator of the Chinese–English Translation Program at the School of Languages and Translation, Macao Polytechnic Institute. Her recent research covers computer-assisted interpreter and translator training, and corpus-based language studies. She has published papers in ReCALL, Babel and The Interpreter and Translator Trainer; chapters with Rodopi, Cambridge Scholars Publishing and Routledge; and a monograph with Bookman. Defeng Li is Professor of translation studies and Director of the Centre for Studies of Translation, Interpreting and Cognition (CSTIC) at the University of Macao. Prior to his current appointment, he served as Chair of the Centre for Translation Studies and Reader in Translation Studies at SOAS, University of London; Director of the MA in Translation and Associate Professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong; Dean and Chair Professor at Shandong University; and (Visiting) Chair Professor at Shanghai Jiao Tong University. He is currently President of World Interpreter and Translator Training Association (WITTA). He has researched and published extensively in the fields of cognitive translation studies, corpus-assisted translation studies, curriculum development in translator training, research methods in translation studies, professional translation (e.g., business, journalistic, legal translation), as well as second language education.

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Editors and Contributors

Contributors Chu-Ren Huang Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, China Leong Ko School of Languages and Cultures, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD, Australia Yue Lang Shanxi University, Taiyuan, China Defeng Li The University of Macau, Macau, China Lily Lim School of Languages and Translation, Macao Polytechnic Institute, Macao, Macau SAR Yifeng Sun University of Macau, Macau, China Zaixi Tan Shenzhen University & Beijing Foreign Studies University, Shenzhen, China Youlan Tao Department of Translation and Interpreting, College of Foreign Languages and Literatures, Fudan University in Shanghai, Shanghai, China Shuhuai Wang School of Foreign Languages, Huazhong University of Science and Technology in Wuhan, Wuhan, China Vincent X. Wang University of Macau, Avenida Da Univesidade, Taipa, Macau Xiaowen Wang School of English Education, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, Guangzhou, China; Faculty of Humanities, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, China Hui Wen School of International Studies, Shaanxi Normal University, Shaanxi, China

Abbreviations

3D AI AR AUSIT BFSU BNC BTI CAT CATTI CSMs CWS DTS EPIC IT KWIC MTI NAATI NSSFC PET SI SIA TAC TS TTS VR

3-dimensional Artificial intelligence Action Research Australian Institute of Interpreters and Translators Beijing Foreign Studies University British National Corpus Bachelor of Translation and Interpreting Computer-assisted translation China Accreditation Test for Translators and Interpreters Culture-Specific linguistic Metaphors Chinese Word Sketch Descriptive translation studies European Parliament Interpreting Corpus Information technology Key Word in Context Master of Translation and Interpreting National Accreditation Authority for Translators and Interpreters National Social Science Fund of China Positron emission tomography Simultaneous interpreting Shanghai Interpretation Accreditation Translators Association of China Translation studies Theoretical translation studies Virtual reality

xv

Chinese Translation Discourse—Traditional and Contemporary Features of Development Zaixi Tan

Abstract Chinese discourse on translation, or the Chinese way of theoretical thinking about translation, can be justifiably conceived as ‘a system of its own’ or ‘a self-sufficient system’ in the study of translation. Often times, such ‘a system of own’ has been confined to referring to the traditional part of Chinese translation scholarship, with its modern, contemporary part of development virtually excluded from such a ‘system’. Most probably, this is because in contemporary times, especially since the end of the 1970s and early 1980s when China was opened up to the outside world, Chinese discourse on translation has been rather heavily influenced by incoming, non-Chinese features. This chapter, however, pertains to a different view, different in the sense that it believes that, ‘as a system of its own’, Chinese translation discourse (Chinese translation theory as well for that matter) should not be thought just to refer to what has happened in the past, but it should also cover what has been happening in the contemporary times, even though what has been happening now may not seem ‘characteristically Chinese’ in the ‘traditionalist’ sense. Starting from such logic, the chapter offers a discussion of some of the most important features of Chinese discourse on translation in both its traditional and contemporary phases of development. It is in the hopes of the discussion to throw insight into a more comprehensive understanding of Chinese discourse on translation as ‘a system of its own’, of the dialectic relationship between what is traditional and what is contemporary, and of the true ‘Chineseness’ of the study of translation in the Chinese context. Keywords Chinese discourse on translation · A system of its own/self-sufficient system · Traditional perceptions · Contemporary features · Future developments

Z. Tan (B) Shenzhen University & Beijing Foreign Studies University, Shenzhen, China e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 L. Lim and D. Li (eds.), Key Issues in Translation Studies in China, New Frontiers in Translation Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-5865-8_1

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Z. Tan

1 Introduction The translation of language is an activity as old as language itself, for either ‘inside or between languages, human communication equals translation’ (Steiner 1975, p. 47). This old, omnipresent activity of human communication is all the more commonly found at work in the globalising or glocalising world of today, so much so that Hito Steyerl has felt obliged to say: ‘If there is any single buzz word of contemporary cultural discourse, it is the notion of translation. Hardly any other notion has made such a rapid career in the intellectual world. A concept of quite humble origins was suddenly elevated into the position of one of the key metaphors of modern political and cultural discourse. Like a magic spell in a fairy tale, translation is supposed to provide a key that opens every door and solves every problem of a globalising world.’ (Steyerl 2019). The above emphasis of the role of translation in human communication and contemporary cultural discourse is to be understood not merely in terms of the practical value of translation, but also in terms of the fact that translation has always constituted an important area of academic interest. In fact, as Kelly has commented (1979, p. 219), though the practice of translation does not depend on theory for its existence, it has nonetheless always led to the development of theoretical thinking about it. The history of translation reveals that the practice of translation in the Chinese tradition, like other translation traditions in the world, including that of the West, has constantly led to the development of theoretical thinking about the practice of this activity, and that the various major historical periods of Chinese translation were not only developmental periods of translation practice but were also developmental periods of theoretical discourse on translation, i.e., those of: (a) Buddhist translation in the Eastern Han-Sui/Tang Dynasties (148–1100s); (b) translation of Western science and technology in the late Ming–early Qing Dynasties (c. 1500s–1700s); (c) translation of Western literary and social sciences works in the Post-Opium War period; and (d) full-scale, all embracive translation activities in the contemporary period of the People’s Republic of China (since 1949, especially since the end of the Chinese Cultural Revolution in 1976). Also, in the same way as the study of language can be divided into a pre-modern and a modern or post-modern phase of development, i.e., a non-linguistics, philological phase and a modern/contemporary linguistics phase, the study of translation can likewise be divided into two mutually distinct phases of development, i.e., a premodern, traditional phase and a modernised contemporary Translation Studies phase. It must also be especially pointed out that, though the contemporary development of ‘Translation Studies as a separate discipline’ was often regarded as ‘a success story of the 1980s’ (Lefevere 1992, p. xi), this ‘success’ story did not emerge out of the blue, or so to speak—it came as the result of continuous development of the study of translation, including in one way or another the development during the long period of the pre-modern times. It would, therefore, be important for discussions such as this one on Chinese translation discourse to involve both the traditional and contemporary phases of development. This is to say that, in principle, I agree with Luo when

Chinese Translation Discourse—Traditional and Contemporary …

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he described Chinese translation theory as ‘a system of its own’ in his seminal paper by the same title (Luo 1983, 1984; see also Tan 2004, p. 230). What Luo’s view seems inadequate, though, at least from my perspective, is that his Chinese translation theory being ‘a system of its own’ basically only refers to the traditional part and does not cover the contemporary phase of development. As I see it, however, Chinese translation theory ‘as system of its own’ should include its entirety of development, i.e., both its traditional and contemporary phases of development. In other words, Chinese translation theory or Chinese discourse on translation must be understood as a continuum that has moved from the past right up to the present, in spite of whatever differences that may have occurred during its general course of development, especially with respect to the different ways of development between the traditional and contemporary times. It is based on this understanding that the present chapter offers a discussion of the Chinese discourse on a translation by examining what could be regarded as some of its most characteristic features for both the traditional and contemporary times, and how its past has led on to its present as well as how its present, against the backdrop of TS development as an independent and autonomous academic discipline in the world of today, may lead on to sustainable development in the future.

2 Representative Thinking in Traditional Chinese Discourse on Translation1 Given the immensity of the Chinese history of translation, it would not be possible, nor is it the intention of this chapter, to cover everything that may be important about how Chinese translators and translation thinkers have perceived translation. Therefore, rather than covering all aspects of Chinese discourse on translation, this discussion will only focus on those that may be regarded as the most representative of the Chinese, especially against an implicit contrast with their non-Chinese (e.g., Western) counterparts. In this connection, three such aspects are identified for the discussion concerning the traditional phase of development of Chinese discourse on translation, namely: those involving the activity of translating/interpreting, the requirements of/prerequisites for the translator/interpreter; and the fundamental principle of Xin (translational faithfulness). i. Chinese Perception of ‘Translating/Interpreting’ The earliest record of the activity of ‘translating/interpreting’ or the agency of the translator/interpreter in China is found in the Liji (礼记) or the Book of Rites. The book described the social forms, governmental system, and ancient/ceremonial rites of the Zhou Dynasty (c. 1050 BCE–256 BCE). The original text is believed to have been compiled by Confucius (551 BCE–479 BCE) himself, while the copy society refers to today is said to be edited and re-worked by various different scholars of the 1 This

part derives from the discussions in Tan (2019, pp. 5–15).

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Z. Tan

Eastern Han Dynasty (202 BCE–220 CE), principally Confucian scholars Dai De ( 戴德) and his nephew Dai Sheng (戴圣) during the Warring States Period (475 BCE– 221 BCE). In Chapter Five of the book, i.e., that on Royal Regulations, there is this following passage: 五方之民,言语不通,嗜欲不同。达其志,通其欲,东方曰寄,南方曰象,西方曰狄鞮,北方曰 译。 《礼记•王制》 ( ) The people living in the five regions spoke different languages and had different customs, likings and preferences. In order to make accessible what was in the minds of different peoples, and in order to make their likings and preferences understood, there were functionaries for the job. Those in charge of the regions in the east were called ji (the entrusted; transmitters); in the south, Xiang (likeness-renderers); in the west, Didi (they who know the Di tribes); and in the north, yi (translators/interpreters). (Tr. by Cheung 2006, p. 46)

Another early, equally important text on translation is provided in the classic of Zhouli (周礼) or the Rites of Zhou, which was reportedly compiled during the Western Han Dynasty (207 BCE–25 CE), at a slightly later time than the Book of Rites. As a collection of treatises on the official system of the Zhou Dynasty and national institutions of various states of the Warring States Period, the Rites of Zhou gave a brief description of the Post of Translator/Interpreter in the chapter on the Qiuguan Sikou rank (秋官司寇/Autumn Officers of Justice), or the 象/Xiang (likeness-renderers) Officer (i.e., Translating/interpreting Officer or Interpreting-Functionaries) of the Autumn Officers of Justice. The relevant description of the post in the book is as follows: 象胥:掌蛮夷、闽貉、戎狄之国使,掌传王之言而谕说焉,以和亲之。若以时入宾,则协 其礼与其辞,言传之……(周礼·秋官司寇) The xiangxu [象胥, interpreting-functionaries: xiang 象, likeness-renderers; xu 胥, minor government officials] are responsible for receiving the envoys of the tribes of Man 蛮, Yi 夷, Min 闽, He 貉, Rong 戎, and Di 狄. They are charged with conveying the words of the King and explaining his meanings to the envoys so that harmonious relations with these tribes may be maintained. At regular intervals, when the heads of these states or their representatives come to court to pay tribute, the xiangxu are responsible for overseeing matters relating to protocol; they also serve as interpreters… (Tr. by Cheung 2006, p. 43)

Five important comments can be made about the two passages cited above and about the activity of translation/interpreting or the agency of the translator/interpreter in ancient China. First, in recorded history, these texts (the first in particular) constitute the earliest texts of Chinese discourse on translation/interpreting, and indeed they have been frequently quoted as such in Chinese translation studies. Second, the fact that both The Book of Rites and The Rites of Zhou were compilations on events during or since the Zhou Dynasty is good evidence that ‘translating/interpreting’ in China is at least 3000 years old. Third, contrary to the rather ‘invisible’ status of their counterparts in other societies, interpreters/translators in ancient China occupied a relatively high social position because they were given the title of ‘government officials’/‘interpreting-functionaries’, albeit not of a particularly high official ranking. Fourth, the role of interpreters/translators in ancient China was more than that of ‘language specialists’—it was a role with socio-political responsibilities

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because interpreters/translators were called upon to help maintain ‘harmonious relations’ with people who ‘living in the five regions spoke different languages and had different customs, likings and preferences’. And fifth, and this is the most important point in terms of Chinese translation discourse, the use of different designations for interpreters/translators in ancient times was significant because these designations serve as a window through which we can see how the ancients perceived interpreting/translation or how they perceived translators/interpreters, and how that perception has evolved in the Chinese tradition of translation discourse. ii. Chinese Perception of ‘Prerequisites for the Translator’ In the Chinese tradition of translation discourse, the way in which the requirements of or prerequisites for a translator are perceived is characterised by an emphasis on the moral aspects of the requirements. This emphasis, in turn, is a reflection of traditional Chinese philosophy in general. In traditional Chinese philosophy, in Taoism, Confucianism and Chinese Buddhism, emphasis is placed on human virtues and values, on personal and governmental morality, correctness of social relationships, justice, traditionalism and sincerity. The focus of these virtues and values is on the morality of human beings and their behaviour. The principle for such behaviour naturally also applies to the personal behaviour of the translator. The most famous and representative discussion of translatorial behaviour, as desired by Chinese society, was provided by the Buddhist translator and scholar Yan Cong (彦琮, 557–610) of the Sui Dynasty (581–618). Yan was well versed in Sanskrit. He was the abbot of a great monastery in the capital city of Xi’an named Da Xin Shan Monastery (大兴善寺), where he took charge of the translation of Buddhist sutras, and he was also involved in all the major ‘Translation Centres’ (译场) across the country. Since he knew Sanskrit and had studied many canonical Buddhist texts in Sanskrit, his task in the ‘Translation Centres’ was to check the Sanskrit texts and the meaning. He also translated from Chinese into Sanskrit and was probably one of the best-known Chinese monks to attain such an accomplishment in history. However, especially to translation scholars of today, what Yan is best-known for is his treatise On the Right Way (辨正论). In that work, he discussed many issues on translation including the developments of Buddhist translation (both theory and practice) since Dao An’s times of the fourth century, general guiding principles of translation and fundamental prerequisites for translators. While his views on Dao An as an exemplary Buddhist translator and scholar, as well as his proposal of the ten guiding principles of translation (翻译十条), were very important in their own ways, it was his proposition on the prerequisites for translators that constituted his greatest contribution to Chinese translation discourse. The ‘Eight Prerequisites for Translators’ proposed by Yan run as follows: 1. A translator must have passion for the Buddhist faith and be ready to spread it to others and devote time and efforts to helping others. 2. He must be sincere in practising the doctrines and hold fast to the rules of abstinence so that he does not arouse scorn or laughter in others.

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Z. Tan 3. He must be well read in Buddhist classics and must thoroughly understand both Mah¯ay¯ana and H¯ınay¯ana Buddhism, and he must be able to overcome the obscurity of language he encounters. 4. He must be well versed in Chinese classics and in Chinese history and acquaint himself with literature so that his translations will not be clumsy and awkward. 5. He must have the serenity and openness of mind, and be modest in attitude, and must not be arbitrary or stubborn in his work as a translator. 6. He must have devotion to the translating job and to improving his skills and must think lightly of fame and riches and harbour no desire to show off. 7. He must have thorough command of Sanskrit and adopt the correct approaches to translating so that the meaning of the doctrines carried in Sanskrit will not be lost or distorted. 8. He must also be familiar with the art of interpreting ancient Chinese texts and be able to use words correctly in his translations. (My translation from Chinese original reprinted in Luo and Chen [2009, pp. 62–63]).

In essence, these eight prerequisites address two major qualities required of the translator: that of personality and that of capability. Each of them concerns two sub-qualities in the translator. As we can see, Yan placed equal emphasis on the translator ‘as a person (broad sense)’ and ‘as a translator (narrow sense)’. In the broad sense, a translator must first see himself not as a ‘translating person/agent’ in the simple technical sense, but in the sense that he has a higher ‘mission’ to fulfil. That is, he must love and practise the truth of the sutra texts he is translating; he must be a virtuous person, a person of high integrity and morality, a person who will devote himself to the lofty ideal of spreading the truth (i.e., Buddhism) and helping others to live a better life (i.e., a believer’s life in Buddhism, in Yan’s sense, but this can now be understood as referring to ‘life’ in the general sense). Once he has positioned himself correctly in life, once he has made up his mind to be a man of high virtue and morality, the translator must assume a correct attitude towards what he is doing. He must not be distracted in his devotion to his goal of life by worldly desires for fame and money. He must be a well-cultivated man, a man of good social conduct. He must be modest and open-minded and be always willing to learn from his work and from other people and to improve himself both as a person and as a translator. Even if he is highly accomplished, he must never be self-conceited. He must always keep in mind that his purpose of translating is not to seek personal fame and gain but to render service to others. Of course, being a good person does not substitute for everything in what constitutes the necessary qualities of a good translator. In order to qualify as a good translator, one must fulfil other, basic requirements or prerequisites too. The most important of these is the translator’s literary capability. In other words, the translator must be very well-read and be fully able to understand the subject matter, i.e., the Buddhist canon and texts of Mah¯ay¯ana and H¯ınay¯ana Buddhism (in terms of the Buddhist translator). Also, he must be a competent writer in the Chinese language so that his translations read like Chinese originals in style and structure.

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In addition, the translator must be an accomplished student of both the source and target languages (in Yan’s case, Sanskrit and classical Chinese). The reason why Yan emphasised the need for the translator to study Sanskrit was that many Chinese translators of Buddhist sutras before his time did not have a good command of Sanskrit in which the sutras were originally written, so their translations were not directly from Sanskrit but indirectly from some intermediate languages spoken in regions to the west of China. In Yan’s view, it was important that the translator of Buddhist sutras acquire a thorough knowledge of Sanskrit and translate directly from the original so that the meaning of the original would be conveyed accurately in the target text. At the same time, the translator must also be mindful of the skills and techniques he uses in the actual operation of translation; he must constantly try and improve on these skills and techniques so that the products are correct and good. These various prerequisites for the translator, as proposed by Yan, had a very strong and lasting impact on Chinese translation discourse. Throughout history, especially in discussing the basic qualities in what constitutes a ‘good translator’, Yan’s ideas have dominated the field. So to the Chinese translator and translation scholar, a ‘good translator’ will always mean more than having a good command of the languages involved in the translation process, good knowledge of the subject matter (the content of the material one is translating) and good operating skills; it will also mean, often more importantly, that the translator has good morality, good personality, good balance of mind, good working attitude, good spiritual power, good professional conduct and good social behaviour. While the category of good command of language, good knowledge of the subject matter and good translating skills is quite general and can be said to be universally shared, the category of morality, personality, balance of mind, working attitude, spiritual power, professional conduct and social behaviour is something more distinctive of Chinese translation discourse. Indeed, emphasising the ethical or moral aspect of something is, in general, a feature of prime importance of Chinese culture and this feature is certainly rather uniquely felt in Chinese discourse on translation. iii. Chinese Perception of ‘Translational Faithfulness’ A third, most characteristic feature of Chinese translation discourse is the way in which translational faithfulness has been perceived by Chinese translators and translation scholars. What is interesting here is perhaps not ‘(translational) faithfulness’ per se as understood with the English term, but how the English ‘faithful’/‘faithfulness’ is comprehended in its counterpart in the Chinese Xin (信) as used by Yan Fu, the most important translation scholar in modern China. The concept of ‘faithfulness’ or Xin in Chinese translation discourse, in the sense that the meaning of the original utterance is accurately conveyed in its corresponding utterance in the target language, can be said to be as old as translation discourse itself. For it was clearly stated in The Book of Rites that the purpose of translating/interpreting was ‘to make accessible what was in the minds of different peoples’ and ‘to make their likings and preferences’ correctly understood. Moreover, according to Luo (1983 [8], p. 12), translational ‘faithfulness’ has remained as an unbroken line in Chinese translation discourse, a line that can be traced from the

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ancients through the moderns right up to the contemporaries. Thus, from Zhi Qian’s distinction between ‘refined’ and ‘unhewn’ styles in translation to Dao An’s insistence on ‘transmitting by following the source’, to Yan Fu’s principle of ‘faithfulness, smoothness and gracefulness’, and further to Fu Lei’s prioritization of ‘resemblance in spirit’ over ‘resemblance in form’ and Qian Zhongshu’s proposition on ‘complete transformation’, the most outstanding characteristic of Chinese translation theory has been adherence to the fundamental principle that a translation should be Xin or ‘faithful’ to the source. However, as we have found, it was not until Yan Fu’s time when the term Xin appeared for the first time in history as a technical term to designate ‘faithfulness’ in translation. But obviously, more than the English ‘faithfulness’, Xin in Chinese seems to be very heavily loaded with cultural values. Although in the context of translation Xin does mean ‘being the same as the original’, as does ‘faithfulness’ in English, it nonetheless has a huge reservoir of cultural connotations and associations. First, Xin is traceable to its early uses by such sages in Chinese philosophy as Confucius and Laozi. So even if it is used in its specific contextualized meaning as in Yan Fu’s triplet principle of Xin (faithfulness), Da (smoothness/comprehensibility) and Ya (gracefulness/elegance), there is always a cultural relatedness to the ancient sages. Second, as one of the five most fundamental categories of ethical virtues in Confucianism, Xin is meaningful not only by itself but also in its correlation with the other four virtues, namely Ren (仁), Yi (义), Li (礼) and Zhi (智) or ‘love; benevolence/benevolence; kind heart/kind-hearted’ for Ren, ‘righteousness; justice’ for Yi, ‘courtesy; ceremonial rites; respectful of standards and regulations’ for Li, and ‘wisdom; intelligence; resourcefulness; knowledge’ for Zhi. And third, like the designations for the other four virtues, Xin in Chinese can also be interpreted in many different ways both in ancient times and today. For example, it can be interpreted as ‘trust; trustworthy; trustworthiness’; ‘credit; credibility’; ‘honest; honesty’; or ‘sincere; sincerity’; or as ‘true; truthful’; ‘loyal; loyalty’ or ‘faith; faithful; faithfulness’. Against such a cultural and historical background, Chinese translators and translation scholars would regard Xin, or even its alternative in contemporary Chinese translation terminology Zhongshi (忠实), as a sacred quality for a translation, just as Confucius and his disciples would regard their Xin or ‘credibility; honesty; sincerity; trustworthiness’ as a sacred quality or virtue for a human being. Consequently, anything that suggests allowance for ‘deliberate deviation’ from, or ‘unfaithful’ translation of, the original will in general not be acceptable within the Chinese frame. This partly explains why such contemporary Western translation theories as skopos theory would not have been possibly produced in the Chinese context, and also why such theories could encounter very strong resistance even today by the ‘traditionalists’ in Chinese TS.

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3 Developments in Contemporary Chinese Discourse on Translation2 As pointed out in Sect. 1 above, the ‘contemporary’ phase of Chinese discourse on translation in this study refers to the development of TS research in China in the times since 1949, especially since the end of the Chinese Cultural Revolution in 1976. More broadly speaking, it was at the end of the 1970s and early 1980s when China opened up to the outside world that the study of translation in the Chinese mainland began to develop with a momentum that had never been seen before. Indeed, when Bassnett and Lefevere declared in the General Editors’ Preface to their Routledge translation studies series that ‘[t]he growth of Translation Studies as a separate discipline is a success story of the 1980s’ (Lefevere 1992, p. xi), their words rang particularly true of the Chinese situation, whether or not they had this in mind when making that statement. Admittedly, the 1980s was a span of ten years and Bassnett and Lefevere did not specify any exact starting year for the development, nor did they give reason(s) why it was during the 1980s that the given ‘success story’ happened. However, with regard to the Chinese situation, as we will see below, three landmarks can be identified to have marked the beginning of such a development. i. Landmarks of Chinese TS Growth in the 1980s Three landmarks can be identified to have marked the beginning of the momentous development of translation studies in China since the early 1980s. The first lies in the launching in 1980 of the Beijing-based journal 翻译通讯 (Translators’ Notes), the then flagship journal for Chinese TS. It is noteworthy, though, that a similar journal by the name of 翻译通报 (Translators’ Bulletin) had existed back in the early 1950s, but that journal was rather short-lived—it was first launched in 1950, discontinued in 1952, resumed publication in 1953 and stopped for good in 1954. Although the similarity in name to Translators’ Bulletin made Translators’ Notes look somewhat like a coming back to life of a past journal after 30 years of ‘dormancy’, it was, in fact, a very different journal not only because it had a different name, however, small that difference may seem, but also in terms of the managerial and editorial policies which governed the journal and the content of its target publications. In essence, the Translators’ Notes was not a re-launching of the former Translators’ Bulletin but a new journal in its own right, a journal edited and published by China’s first major translation and publishing company, the China Translation and Publishing Corporation (CTPC), founded in 1973. The journal became an immediate success as it attracted large numbers of translators and translation studies scholars across the country to use it as the country’s most important platform for discussing and exchanging views on translation issues. Therefore, the 1980 launch of the Translators’ Notes could be looked to as the first major marker of the beginning of the Chinese TS era. This first landmark soon led to an equally important second. In 1983, three years after the successful launch of the Translators’ Notes, editorship of the journal was 2 This

part is mainly based on the discussions in Tan (2017, pp. 606–618).

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transferred from the CTPC to the newly-founded Chinese Translators Association, followed in 1986 by a change of the journal name from Translators’ Notes to 中国翻 译 (Chinese Translators Journal). These two events were combined to signify a major step forward for Chinese TS, in the sense that the journal, especially under its new name, now served as an even more powerful rallying point for Chinese translators and translation researchers to actively engage in exploring both the practical and theoretical issues of translation. At the time following the change of the name, the journal reportedly enjoyed a circulation of more than 30,000 copies per issue. Such a figure must have then stood among the largest as compared with any other TS journal in the world and that could be seen as a strong reflection not only of the successful operation of the journal but, more importantly, also of the vigour and vitality with which translation studies was developing on the Chinese arena. The third landmark bears upon the development of translation theory itself and is found in the convention of China’s First National Conference on Translation Theory. Held in the Shandong city of Qingdao in the summer of 1987, organised by the Chinese Translators Journal and the Chinese Translators Association in collaboration with the local Translators Association of Shandong Province, the conference was able to draw participants from all over the Chinese mainland as well as from other Chinese speaking areas including Hong Kong and Macao. Two keynote papers were presented on the first day, one by Liu Miqing and the other by Tan Zaixi, with Tan speaking on ‘必须建立翻译学’ (The Necessity of Developing a Science of Translation) and Liu on the ‘中国翻译理论的基本特色’ (The Distinctive Features of Chinese Translation Theory). Both papers were also published as journal articles, with Tan’s by the same title as his conference presentation, in the Chinese Translators Journal (1987, No. 3), and Liu’s, by the title of ‘论中国翻译理论基本模 式’ (The Basic Mode of Chinese Translation Theory), in a subsequent issue of the same Chinese Translators Journal (1989, No. 1). With the conference call being on the exploration of translation models and theories in the Chinese context, Tan’s proposition that the study of translation be developed as a separate, ‘scientific’ discipline was received with enthusiasm by the audiences, and led to heated debate not only at the conference but subsequently also on various other occasions (e.g., at the First Postgraduate Research Students’ Conference on Translation Theory, held in the same year of 1987 at Nanjing University following the Qingdao conference, where the theme of ‘developing the science of translation’ attracted equally enthusiastic responses from among the conference participants). In view of this, and in view of the various developments and debates which followed and which were associated with those three major landmarks, it was indeed during the 1980s that translation studies in China eventually emerged as an independent academic discipline, which status was consolidated further in the years that followed. The section below provides a discussion of these developments and debates.

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ii. Major Chinese TS Developments and Debates from 1980s Through 1990s to the Present (a) Major TS Developments One of the most notable developments in Chinese TS has been the introduction of foreign translation theory. Back in the early 1980s, China had just begun to open up to the outside world after an entire ten years of a destructive Cultural Revolution. The nation was then on the move for change. Not only was there the urge for open-door engagement with other nations in the world economically, but there was also great enthusiasm for cultural exchange, including an exchange in the field of translation. It was in that context that an unprecedented, huge influx of foreign (especially Western and Soviet Russian) thoughts and ideas began to emerge in the Chinese translation studies field. The earliest article spearheading that influx was Yi Fan’s review article on ‘西方的文学翻译’ (Literary Translation in the West), published in 1980, in the 3rd issue of the newly launched Translators’ Notes (Yi 1980). This led on to a second, a third, and innumerably many others, published in various translation and foreign language studies journals (for a more detailed account of these journals, see further below). In 1983, a collection of papers was published, the first of its kind in Chinese in the twentieth century, on Western translation theory. By the title of 外国翻译理论 评介文集 (Selected Essays on Foreign Translation Theory), edited and published by CTPC, this volume of 14 articles introduced such important TS figures as Eugene Nida, Andrei V. Fedorov, John Catford, Peter Newmark, Roman Jakobson, Leonid S. Barkhudarov, and Givi R. Gachechiladze. Though many of these names were not new to Chinese readers because of their earlier journal appearances, the collection of various articles in a single volume still had a powerful impact on the emerging Chinese TS scene. This impact was further strengthened by the publication of 奈 达论翻译 (Nida on Translation; Tan 1984), and successively afterwards by other translations or ‘transadaptations’ of Western and Soviet Russian works including Barchudarov’s Yazyk i perevod (tr. as: 语言与翻译/Language and Translation; Cai et al. 1985), George Steiner’s After Babel: Aspects of Language and Translation (tr. as: 通天塔: 文学翻译理论与 究; Zhuang 1987), Gachechiladze’s Vvedenie v teoiyu khudozhestvennogo perevoda (tr. as: 文艺翻译与文学交流/ An Introduction to the Theory of Literary Translation; Cai and Yu Jie 1987), Delisle’s L’analyse du discours comme methode de traduction (tr. as: 翻译理论与翻译教学法; Sun 1988), and John Catford’s A Linguistic Theory of Translation (tr. as: 翻译的语言学理论; Mu 1991). Of all Western names known to the Chinese, that of Eugene Nida or 尤金•奈达 (Youjin Naida) in Chinese, is worth particular mentioning. As pointed out in a special contribution by Tan in Translators and Their Readers. In Homage to Eugene A. Nida edited by Rodica Dimitriu and Miriam Shlesinger (Tan 2009a), Nida’s name was first introduced by Lin Shuwu in an article published in 1981 in the journal of 国外语言 学 (Linguistics Abroad). Entitled ‘奈达的翻译理论简介’ (A Brief Introduction to Nida’s Translation Theory; Lin 1981), that article reviewed Nida’s three-step model

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of the translation process and discussed how Nida’s concept of kernel constructions and Chomsky’s transformational-generative grammar were related. The article emphasised that Nida’s translation theory was based on the linguistics of translation, and that it was influenced by transformational-generative grammar. However, as we see it, Nida’s ‘kernel sentence transfer’ concept only constitutes a small part of his theoretical repertoire on translation. Therefore, Lin’s article apparently did not do enough justice to Nida because his readers were led to believe that the most important contribution of Nida seems to lie in his kernel sentence proposition. As the article was primarily targeted at a linguistics audience and was carried in a linguistics rather than translation studies journal, it did not circulate widely among translation scholars, and so its influence on Chinese TS was limited. The real influence of Nida on the minds of Chinese translation scholars came at a later time. It began with the publication in 1982 in the Translators’ Notes of the next major article on Nida entitled ‘翻译是一门科学——评介奈达着「翻译 科学探索’ (Translation is a Science: An introduction to Nida’s Toward a Science of Translating), followed in 1983 by ‘奈达论翻译的性质’ (Nida on the Nature of Translation), published in the same journal, and in 1984 by the book 奈达论翻译 (Nida on Translation) published by CTPC. These items, all authored by Tan, created a tremendous impact on Chinese translation studies which had not immediately followed Lin’s earlier introduction to Nida. Citations of Tan’s works on Nida and direct references to Nida’s thoughts and ideas began to appear, in large numbers, in university degree dissertations, research papers and TS publications. Studies on Nida by other scholars also began to appear in various Chinese journals. At the same time, a book entitled On Translation: With Special Reference to Chinese and English, written in English and co-authored by Jin Di and Eugene Nida himself, was published in 1984 in Beijing, which was followed in 1987 by a co-authored article by Tan and Nida on ‘论翻译学的途径’ (Approaches to Translation, 1987), published in the reputable journal of 外语教学与研究 (Foreign Language Teaching and Research). So not only through translations, introductions and studies on Nida, but also through co-authored publications, Nida came forth to both directly and indirectly address the Chinese audience with his ideas on ‘dynamic/functional equivalence’ and ‘equal receptor-response’. All these efforts contributed to the build-up of Nida’s influence on China’s contemporary translation studies, so much so that by the end of the 1980s the name of Eugene Nida was on almost everybody’s lips in China, in much the same way as what had happened during a long period of time to the name of Yan Fu (1854–1921), the bestknown Chinese translation theorist of the modern times. There were many reasons why this happened. First, as mentioned above, the China of the time, especially during the early part of the 1980s, was just opening up, and there was a strong desire to learn about what had happened in other nations while China was in isolation from them. Second, given the big name he had already established in the translation studies world in the West, the selection of Nida for introduction was undoubtedly a right choice. In a sense, Nida’s popularity among Chinese scholars was an extension of his influence back in his home culture. Third, Nida’s ideas, especially those on ‘dynamic equivalence’ and ‘equal receptor-response’, represented a kind of novelty

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to the Chinese tradition of translation where the main concern had all along been centred around the dispute between ‘literal translation 直译’ and ‘sense-for-sense translation 意译’. Fourthly, and in retrospect, this might have been one of the most important reasons, Nida’s translation theory was considered by the Chinese to be largely practice-oriented, albeit mainly towards the translation of the Bible. Such a practical orientation readily fits in with an equally practice-minded Chinese tradition of translation. This partly explains why other, ‘meta-level’ ‘linguistic theories’ of translation did not become as popular with the Chinese translator and translation studies scholar, even though they were also introduced into China at more or less the same time as the Nida model (e.g., Catford’s ‘linguistic theory of translation’). Indeed, the first attempts by Lin, and then by Tan, to introduce Nida’s translation theory to Chinese readers ushered in an upheaval of Chinese interest in the 1980s in the study of one of the world’s best-known translation figures of the twentieth century. That interest, though in somewhat reduced intensity during the 1990s, has nonetheless largely remained robust to this day. This can be shown by the extensive scale on which papers were written by Chinese students, teachers and researchers on Nida. According to a survey by Chen Hongwei (2001), of the 849 articles on topics of translation published from 1980 to 2000 in the Chinese Translators Journal, 92 items are studies on Nida, taking up more than 10% of the journal’s total output of papers. The extensive interest in the study and application of Nida’s translation theory has remained true even in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries when a lot of research interest was beginning to be diverted to other approaches such as the postcolonial, the deconstructionist, the polysystem, the skopos, the gender studies and other cultural approaches. A quick search through the biggest Chinese database on publications in Chinese journals, i.e., the China Journal Net (中国期刊全文数 据库), and the largest online search engine on China’s academic works including Master’s and doctoral dissertations in Chinese universities (i.e., the cnki.net [中国 知网]) reveals a very large pool of papers and dissertations on Nida over the past years. As of the first half of 2008, a rough calculation of the research outputs on Nida puts the figure of journal articles at more than a hundred (in addition to the 92 items published in the Chinese Translators Journal between 1980 and 2000 covered in Chen’s above-mentioned survey), and university degree dissertations at more than fifty. These are items that explicitly carry the name of Nida in their titles. If one includes items that do not contain the name of Nida in their titles but which are related in one way or another to Nida’s theory on ‘dynamic/functional equivalence’ and ‘equal receptor-response’, the figure would be considerably higher. These above-cited figures must sufficiently indicate how influential Nida has been on translation studies in China, which, in turn, epitomises overall Western (and to a lesser extent Soviet Russian) influence on Chinese TS since the 1980s. Admittedly, Western thoughts and ideas, including those of Nida, did not come into the contemporary Chinese TS scene without encountering criticism and resistance. Towards the end of the 1980s and during the 1990s, questions were raised against Nida’s theory, concerning, for example, his application of the ‘deep structure’ concept to the study of translation problems (Chen and Wu 1987), his ‘dynamic equivalence’ (Lan 1988; Wu 1994), and his ‘equal receptor-response’ (Qian 1988). Some of the criticisms

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sounded quite dismissive (though often unjustifiably so). Also, almost right from the beginning of the post-Cultural Revolution import of foreign or Western thoughts and ideas on translation, there have been unhappy voices and sometimes even resistance from among Chinese scholars against this import, as these scholars either did not quite see it necessary for the ‘self-sufficient’ Chinese tradition of translation to ‘borrow’ theory from other systems (Luo 1984) or were worried that Chinese translation theory would be overwhelmed by the ‘excessive import of Western ideas’ (Zhang 2006, p. 59). It was this kind of ‘unhappy voices’ or resistance, together with their underpinning rationale, that gave rise to one of the major debates that Chinese TS has seen during its past years of development, i.e. on whether the introduction of foreign (especially Western) translation theory is useful or harmful to Chinese translation theory. As a further discussion will be provided for this debate in Sect. 3(b) below, we shall not dwell on the issue here. Suffice it to say at this point that, in spite of the different, sometimes strongly resistant, views and opinions, especially from among those who may be described as ‘conservatives’ and ‘traditionalists’ (Tan 2009b, pp. 285–292), the introduction of and learning from foreign translation theories that began in the early 1980s have never really ceased. A second, related development in Chinese TS has been the publication in massive numbers of TS research outputs. As seen from the preceding paragraphs, the massive influx of foreign translation theory since the 1980s necessarily indicated a massive scale of publications. Hundreds and thousands of TS articles (introductory and review articles on foreign translation theories included) were published over the past 40 or so years, not only in the most prominent Chinese TS journal, i.e. the Translators’ Notes and its subsequently renamed Chinese Translators Journal, but also in other major journals on translation and language studies and on linguistics. These include: (a) the aforementioned 外语教学与研究 (Foreign Language Teaching and Research; relaunched in 1977 after 11 years of suspension [1966– 1977], first launched in 1957; based in Beijing); (b) 当代语言学 (Contemporary Linguistics, based in Beijing, formerly named 国外语言学 [Linguistics Abroad, 1980–2010], 语言学动态 [Developments in Linguistics, 1978–1980], 语言学数据 [Materials in Linguistics, 1962–1966], first launched in 1962 as a supplementary journal to the 1953-founded 中国语文 [Studies of the Chinese Language]); (c) 外国 语 (Journal of Foreign Languages, launched in 1978 and based in Shanghai); (d) 现 代外语 (Modern Foreign Languages, launched in 1978 and based in Guangzhou); (e) 外语与外语教学 (Foreign Languages and Their Teaching, launched in 1985 and based in Dalian; (f) 中国科技翻译 (Chinese Science and Technology Translators Journal, launched in 1988 and based in Beijing and (g) 上海翻译 (Shanghai Journal of Translators, formerly named 上海科技翻译 [Shanghai Journal of Translators for Science and Technology, 1986–2005], first launched in 1986). From time to time TS articles are also found carried in virtually every university journal across the nation (there being an overall estimate of not less than two thousand such university journals in China). In more concrete terms, according to a study of 15 Chinese core translation and foreign language studies journals (Xu 2009), the number of TS articles published in these journals between 1979 and 2008 is as big as

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9000. If one factors in the many non-core journals, the hundreds of general university journals that may have also occasionally carried TS articles, and the numerous conference papers (published or unpublished), and if one also factors in the more than 10 additional years from 2008 to the end of 2019, it would be safe to put the number of TS articles and papers at more than double that figure. Equally enormous is the number of published Chinese TS books, including monographs, anthologies, conference proceedings, dictionaries, encyclopedias, textbooks, and doctoral and other university degree dissertations. According to the statics provided in Xu (2009), during the 30 years from 1979 to 2008, a total of 1600 books were published, most of them in the post-1990 period. Of these, the number of translation or translation studies textbooks takes the greatest proportion, amounting to 52% of the total turnout; followed by a 13% of collections of TS essays; a 10% of translation techniques books or handbooks, most of which address the language pair of English and Chinese, mainly dealing with non-literary text types; a 9% of theoretical TS books; and the remainder is of translation histories, dictionaries and other tool type of books. Following the same logic described above, that is, if one takes into account the 10 more recent years when Chinese TS has been progressing with an even greater momentum, it would be justifiable to say that the number of TS publications must now stand at far greater a figure than that provided in Xu’s 2009 presentation. A third major development in Chinese TS relates itself to the teaching and training of and education in translation and interpreting. As discussed in Tan (2000, p. 12), among the essential constructs for a developed TS as a separate discipline, the training and education of TS talents must always be regarded highly because, without this most fundamental construct, there would be no motivating force for sustained TS development. It is with this understanding that we may attribute the vigorous and for ever-growing interest in TS development in China to the massive efforts being made on the translation/interpreting teaching and educational front. To some extent, since the early 1980s, China has increasingly become one of fast-growing TS training and education centres in the world. For example, according to statistics provided by Xu (Xu and Mu 2009, p. 5), as of 2009, most of the 1200 institutions of tertiary education in China which had foreign language schools or departments had offered translation/interpreting courses; some 150 of them had run research-based Master’s Degree programmes in translation and interpreting, and more than 40 professionoriented M.A. in Translation or Interpreting (or MATI) programmes; more than 30 TS doctoral programmes and some 19 B.A. degree in T/I programmes; not to mention the vast number of foreign language training centres and evening or summer schools across the country where translation and interpreting as well as TS courses were also taught. Worth special mentioning at this point are the teaching and training of translation in other Chinese-language contexts, especially those of Hong Kong and Taiwan. Often described as Asia’s world city where East meets West, Hong Kong has always enjoyed a unique position in communication across languages and cultures. As noted in Tan (2014, p. 48), after 1997 when China resumed sovereignty and Hong Kong entered its new phase of development under the principle of ‘one country, two systems’, a

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proactive language policy of ‘bi-literacy and tri-lingualism’ (两文三语) continued to engage East-West interaction in the region. With such a strategic position, Hong Kong has become one of the most important hubs of interlingual communication in Asia as well as the world, in particular one for the teaching and training of translators and interpreters. Of the eight government-funded universities in Hong Kong, seven offer translation programmes at the undergraduate level, five at the M.A. level, and five at the M.Phil. and/or doctoral level. Viewed both in terms of a large number of translation programmes in proportion to the relatively small size of Hong Kong, and in terms of how they have been successfully operating and expanding over the past decades, starting from the setting up in 1972 of the first ever academic department of translation in Hong Kong (and in the greater China region for that matter), i.e. the Department of Translation of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, these translation and interpreting programmes have undoubtedly played a leading role in the field of TS degree education in the Chinese-language context. In the face of the rapid emergence and development in recent years of TS programmes in the Chinese mainland (the professionally-oriented MTI programmes included), new efforts are being made and new pedagogical models (such as the student-centred OBTL [Outcomes-based Teaching and Learning] model) are being implemented across the various institutions in Hong Kong, so as to meet up new challenges and further enhance teaching and learning effectiveness, and these again in many ways seem to be setting a new pedagogical model for other Chinese-language-related translation programmes to follow, including those in the Chinese mainland. In Taiwan, important developments were also seen over the past years in the teaching and training of translators and interpreters. Among the better-known institutions offering TS degree education are Fu Jen Catholic University, National Taiwan Normal University, Chang Jung Christian University, Changhua University of Education and Wenzao Ursuline University of Languages. Since the inception in 1988 of the first Graduate Institute of Translation and Interpretation in Taiwan, i.e. that of FJCU, which in 2010 was incorporated into the Graduate Institute of Cross-Cultural Studies, the teaching of translation and interpreting has been progressing steadily across Taiwan, with a broadening of the range of TS degree programmes, from an initial, limited postgraduate level at FJCU and NTNU to fuller-fledged programmes covering both the postgraduate and undergraduate levels at most of the TS degreeoffering institutions. Undoubtedly, the teaching and training of translators and interpreters in Taiwan, like those in the Chinese mainland and Hong Kong (for lack of space, no discussion is made here of Macao, but the same description applies there as well), have drawn wide social recognition as they not only lead to the offering of TS degrees, hence enhancing communal awareness that translation studies have become a separate academic discipline, but even more importantly they cultivate and turn out skilled professionals for the translation and interpreting community, whose role must be seen as indispensable for the rapidly growing economy of the region and during the rapidly globalising times. (b) Major TS Debates

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As mentioned at the end of Sect. 2, at least three major theoretical debates have occurred over the last thirty or more years, affecting as well as reflecting TS development in the Chinese academia. The first, which occurred early on in the 1980s and persisted in the 1990s and even the early 2000s, concerns the ‘science’ issue of translation. The following questions were recurrently asked and debated on in this respect: ‘Is translation a science or an art?’ and ‘Can translation studies be regarded as a separate academic (or ‘scientific’ for some scholars) discipline?’ The debate was triggered off initially by Tan’s article ‘翻译是一门科学’ (Translation is a Science) published in 1982. As noted earlier, the article was basically an introduction to Nida’ 1964 book Toward a Science of Translating and his theory of dynamic equivalence, but partly because of the ‘eye-catching’ title of the article and partly because of the title of Nida’s own book, the article seemed to suggest arguing for the development of ‘a science of translation’ in the Chinese context. The repercussions of that article were more conspicuously felt at the aforesaid China’s First National Conference on Translation Theory convened in 1987, where heated debate took place both at the plenary and panel sessions on whether translation is a science or an art (see Sect. 2). The debate in its initial phase was well summarised by Lan in his article (1988) ‘科 学与艺术之争—翻译研究方法论思考’ (Science vs. Art: Methodological Reflections on Translation Studies), in which he argued for a compromise between the two. However, in Tan’s paper ‘The Necessity of Developing a Science of Translation’, both delivered at the conference and published in the Chinese Translators Journal in the same year of 1987, the proposition was that the study/theory of translation is a science (and human science at that), hence the disciplinary name ‘翻译 学’ (translated into English by Tan as ‘the science of translation’; Tan 1987, 1997), and that ‘the practice of translation’ is not and cannot be a science, but a skill, a technology and an art. Whether owing to differences in understanding the two concepts, i.e., the study/theory and the practice of translation, or out of an earnest interest in deciphering the meaning of translation studies as a separate discipline, more papers came out on the Chinese TS arena later on in the 1990s through the early 2000s debating the ‘scientific’ or ‘non-scientific’ nature of translation and translation studies. Among the more sceptical and sometimes rather ‘belligerent’ were such articles as Lao’s ‘丢掉幻想, 联系实践—揭破「翻译(科)学」的迷梦’ (Throw Away Illusions and Be Practical: Breaking the Unrealisable Dream of the ‘Science of Translation; 1996) and Zhang’s ‘翻译学: 一个未圆且难圆的梦’ (Translatology: An Unrealised and Unrealisable Dream’; 1999), whereas those papers that defended or argued for the development of TS as a separate, ‘scientific’ or ‘academic’ discipline mainly included Chang’s ‘走出死胡同, 建立翻译学’ (Out of the Dead End and into Translation Studies; 1995), Liu’s ‘关于建立翻译学的一些看法’ (Some Reflections on Developing a Translatology; 1995), Wang and Chu’s ‘翻译学之我见’ (Our Views on Translatology; 1996), Han’s ‘翻译学不是梦—兼与张经浩先生商榷’ (Translatology Is not a Dream—Some Different Reflections on Translatology—In Response to Zhang Jinghao’s Argument; 2000), He’s ‘翻译学: 历史与逻辑的必然’ (Translatology: A Historical and Logical Necessity of Translation Studies; 2000) and Hou’s ‘翻译为何不可为「学?’ (Why not Translatology; 2000).

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Currently, though the opponents cannot be categorically said to have been convinced of the proponents’ arguments, a general consensus seems nonetheless to have been achieved in the Chinese academia on the disciplinary nature of TS. For the broadly shared view among Chinese TS scholars, today is that the study of translation has indeed grown into an academic discipline in its own right, regardless of whether it is ‘scientific’ or ‘non-scientific’ in nature, and that research efforts should no longer be focused on debating whether translation is a science or an art, but on how concretely TS can be developed (Tan 2000, 2012; Liu 2000; Zhu 2000, 2004; Xu 2003; Xu and Mu 2009). The second debate was focused on whether the introduction of foreign, especially Western, thinking on translation is beneficial or detrimental to the development of the Chinese tradition. As pointed out in Sect. 3(a) above, almost as soon as the post-Cultural Revolution import of foreign (mainly Western and former Soviet Russian) translation theory began in the early 1980s, there came resistance among some scholars against this import. The most recent and outspoken resistance was found in Zhang’s 2006 article published in the Chinese Translators Journal. Under the title of ‘主次颠倒的翻译研究和翻译理论’ (Misplaced Priorities in Translation Studies and Translation Theory), the article relentlessly criticised the most important translation studies journal in China for publishing too much on Western translation theory, saying that Chinese translation theory would be overwhelmed by the ‘excessive import of Western ideas’ (Zhang 2006, p. 59). Zhang’s view was immediately challenged by counter-criticisms, the most notable in Chen’s paper ‘冷静看待中国 翻译研究现状—兼与张经浩先生商榷’ (The Current State of Translation Studies in China: A Rational Assessment—In Response to Zhang’s View). Disagreeing with what Zhang said on the status quo of Chinese import of Western translation theory, Chen sees the positive effects that imported foreign (mainly Western) theories of translation have had on the modernisation of Chinese translation theory, saying that Zhang’s opposition ‘would do more harm than good to the disciplinary construction of China’s translation’ (Chen 2007, p. 38). The third debate in Chinese TS centred around the issue of ‘Chineseness’ in Chinese translation theory. The questions asked or heard asked on the issue, especially after Luo published his well-known 翻译论集 (Anthology of Essays on Translation) in 1984 which carried his own essay as the introductory chapter of the book, i.e., ‘我 国自成体系的翻译理论’ (Our Country’s Translation Theory: A system of Its Own), were as follows: Is there ‘translation theory’ (or a ‘system’ of translation theory, in Luo’s words) in the Chinese translation tradition? Is there a ‘Chineseness’ in Chinese translation theory or Chinese translation discourse? How can this ‘Chineseness’ be defined? Can this ‘Chineseness’ be purposely designed and built? and so on and so forth. Various views have been found in response to these questions, which may be broadly grouped under three headings. The first, typically represented by Luo (1984), followed by Gui (1986), Liu (1989, 1993, 2005), Sun (1997), Zhang and Jiang (1997) and Zhang (2006), not only believes in the Chinese tradition having produced translation theory but also in its being a ‘fully developed theoretical system of its own’. Describable as ‘traditionalists’ and ‘conservatives’ (Tan 2009b, pp. 285–286),

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scholars holding this view tended to be those who resisted the import of non-Chinese translation theory and those who were keen to emphasise the uniqueness of ‘Chinese features’ in the theorisation about translation in China. The second view, in contrast, can be called ‘non-traditionalist’ and ‘generalist’ or, to borrow a term from Tan (2009b, p. 283), ‘ethnoconvergent’. As discussed in Tan (1987, 1997, 2000, 2009b, 2012), Chang (1995, 2000) and Zhu (2000, 2004), this view differs from the first in that it points to the Chinese need to explore the general (or universally applicable) features of translation and translation theory, and does not emphasise (although it unequivocally recognises) the uniqueness of any theoretical tradition of translation, so that such uniqueness of any tradition will not be used as a pretext for rejecting ‘useful’ thoughts and ideas from other systems. As argued in Tan (2009b), the ‘Chineseness’ of Chinese translation theory, like the Englishness, Germanness, Frenchness and ‘Russianness’ of English, German, French and Russian translation theory, respectively, should be regarded as a translational phenomenon that exists; it is not something to be deliberately designed or built—any artificial emphasis on the manufacturing of a uniqueness of translation theory, be it in the form of Sinocentrism or Eurocentrism or otherwise, will only be damaging rather than beneficial to the development of translation studies as a whole. Sitting somewhere between these above positions is a third type of view, which can be described neither as ‘traditionalist’ in the sense of the first, nor ‘generalist’ in the sense of the second. This is the view best represented by Martha Cheung’s effort in replacing the term ‘Chinese translation theory’ with ‘Chinese discourse on translation’. Instead of entitling her English-language anthology (2006, 2017) Chinese Translation Theory, in the same way as Douglas Robinson calls his anthology Western Translation Theory (1997), Cheung preferred using the word ‘discourse’ to ‘theory’ (or theories, etc.) in the title of her 2006 book, i.e., An Anthology of Chinese Discourse on Translation Vol. 1—From Earliest Times to the Buddhist Project, as well as in the title of An Anthology of Chinese Discourse on Translation. Vol. 2: From the Late Twelfth Century to 1800, published posthumously in 2017 under the editorship by Robert Neather. It is indeed true that by using ‘Chinese [translation] discourse’ to describe ‘Chinese [translation] theory’, Cheung successfully avoided treating Chinese theoretical thinking about translation as ‘theory’ in any reductive sense, in the sense that when interpreted by the standards of Western translation ‘theory’ Chinese translation ‘theory’ may not seem as forceful. However, again as has somehow been touched upon previously, Cheung’s effort seems more to beg the question than to really solve the problem. In discussing the Chinese tradition of translation, it would not be an ideal solution to argue for either the exclusive use of ‘[Chinese translation] discourse’ or that of ‘[Chinese translation] theory’, but to argue for the use of both, because there exist both a Chinese tradition of studying and discussing translation [i.e., discourse] and a Chinese legacy of theoretical ideas about translation [i.e., theory]. In the context of Chinese thinking on translation—the same logic also applies to other contexts including the Western—it is meaningful to talk about there being both ‘Chinese translation discourse’ and ‘Chinese translation theory’. Whether one uses the term of the former or that of the latter mainly has to do with perspective,

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or one’s focus of discussion. Just as ‘Chinese translation theory’ matches well with ‘Western translation theory’, so does ‘Chinese translation discourse’ with ‘Western translation discourse’ (or any other types of translation discourse for that matter). This being said, it must nonetheless be re-affirmed that Cheung’s preference of talking about ‘[Chinese translation] discourse’ over ‘[Chinese translation] theory’ did stand distinctly away from existing views. As such, it helped consolidate the efforts that had earlier begun (e.g., in Wong 1999 and then in Wang 2003) to ‘reinterpret’ or ‘rediscover’ what can be regarded as ‘intrinsically’ Chinese discourse on translation. (c) The Dynamics of Contemporary Chinese TS Research and Future Directions How then, against the backdrop of Western influence and a grown and yet still growing theoretical awareness in the Chinese academia, will translation studies be developing in China in the new millennium? This is an issue that Chinese TS scholars are particularly interested in and have time and again discussed at various TS conferences, symposia and colloquia that were held over recent years. Among the more important were ‘全国首届翻译学学科理论建设研讨会’ (First National Conference on TS Disciplinary Construction; 20–23 May 2004, Chengdu), ‘翻译 学学科建设高端论坛’ (TS Disciplinary Construction Summit; 13–15 April 2012, Hongzhou) and 《外国语》 ‘ 翻译理论研究及学科建设高层论坛’ (The Journal of Foreign Languages Summit on TS Theories and Disciplinary Construction; 18–21 January 2014, Guangzhou). The reason why these were considered to be among the most important TS conferences was that they not only gathered together many of the country’s most influential, frontline TS researchers to participate in them, but the views expressed at the conferences, especially those on the future directions of Chinese TS development, were also subsequently published in two of China’s most important TS and foreign language studies journals, i.e., the Chinese Translators Journal (issues 2004 [3]; 2012 [4]) and the Journal of Foreign Languages (2014 [4]), respectively. It would, of course, not be doing justice to other views appearing in the Chinese TS field to naively claim that the summary discussion below represents everybody’s opinion on how Chinese scholars have been thinking in those conferences and postconference publications about future Chinese TS development. However, at least insofar as the vision of this author allows, the following account hopes to give some idea, however personal, about what directions Chinese TS will likely be progressing towards in the years ahead (for a related discussion, see Tan 2012, p. 9, 2014, pp. 4–5). First, Chinese TS development will continue to target at five of the most fundamental tasks in the new millennium, namely: (a) conducting more in-depth TS research that will lead to the publication of more original thinking on issues of translation and translation studies; (b) making continued efforts to improve the Chinese conceptual and terminological system involving the making of Chinese TS tools such as TS dictionaries, TS encyclopaedia and TS handbooks; (c) exploring and opening up new Chinese TS topical areas so that the scope and territory of translation and translation studies will be constantly expanded and developed; (d) enhancing the training and education of Chinese TS talents; and (e) making further attempts

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through all channels to achieve broader societal recognition for the development of Chinese TS. Second, Chinese TS will continue to direct attention at addressing five major relationships, namely the relationships between (a) present research and past thinking on translation in the Chinese tradition; (b) the ‘particularist’ and the ‘universalist’ views on translation and translation studies; (c) positions on learning from the theoretical ‘Other’ versus keeping to the theoretical ‘Self’; (d) the practice and the theory of translation; and (e) the art and technology of translation and the academic/scientific discipline of translation studies. And third, in more specific terms, Chinese TS will continue to make innovative efforts around six sets of TS research themes, involving the ‘what’, ‘how’, ‘who’, ‘why’, ‘where’ and when issues about translation and translation studies. The following is but a selective account of these wh-questions that seem to have a more current bearing on Chinese TS: (a) What ontological configurations can be made of the nature of translation, with regard to such thinking as to whether to see translation as a prototypical category or to see it as an act where the concept of ‘accuracy’/‘faithfulness’/‘equivalence’ is no longer important? (b) How do Chinese translators and TS scholars see the importance of integrating translation theory with translation practice? How, in Chinese-language contexts, can translation/interpreting be taught? How can or should TS degree programmes be operated? (c) Who, according to Chinese TS theories, can or should be considered to be the stakeholders of given translation projects? (d) Why should a translation read like the original? Why should a translation read like an original? Why is a translation never an identical copy of the source text? Why can translators be said to be painters, photographers, mediators, traitors, etc.? (e) Where do worthy translation projects come from? Where do finished translation products go? (f) When, insofar as Chinese contexts are concerned, does the need to translate arise? When does translation become more important than original writing? When is there the call for non-conventional translation (i.e., e-translation or machine)? And when is there the need to start studying translation, and so on? Obviously, these have all along been challenging and important issues and themes to Chinese TS in the past, and they will likely remain so in the future. In a sense, they constitute important topical areas where continued, solid research efforts will likely lead to even greater advances in the Chinese TS field. This is especially true against the backdrop of China’s rapid economic growth in more recent years and the country’s ambitious institutional planning for outbound strategic cultural initiatives, including the implementation of its Culture Development Programme during the National 11th Five-Year Plan Period (中国文化走出去战略) that began in 2011. In the implementation of this initiative, the translation of Chinese-language materials into foreign languages (mainly English) plays a pivotal role, and this ranges from the translation of cultural to non-cultural products such as Chinese literature (i.e., classical, modern and contemporary works, poetry, fiction, folk opera, etc.) and traditional Chinese medicine, and from translation by the human hand to that done electronically. In many ways, the aforesaid issues and themes, together with the above-described new strategic cultural initiatives, well reflect the dynamics not only of a vigorously

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developing Chinese TS today but also of a Chinese TS under the new conditions of a challenging but quite promising tomorrow.

4 Conclusion In the context of Chinese thinking on translation—the same logic may also apply to other contexts including those of the West—like in the other fields such as language studies or linguistics, it is possible and meaningful to talk of there being a traditional and a contemporary constituent part of the tradition or system as a whole. In other words, as pointed out at the beginning of this chapter, Luo’s description (1983, 1984; Tan 2004) of Chinese translation theory as being ‘a system of its own’ would be more complete, hence more agreeable too, if it does not confine itself only to the traditional aspects of Chinese thinking about translation but extends to cover both its past and developments in the modern, contemporary times as well. As is indeed true, the traditional phase of development tends to bear features more easily recognised as characteristic Chinese. However, to the understanding of this author, whatever is produced within the boundaries of the Chinese language and culture, even if it may be a lesser candidate for the cultural representation of a typical Chineseness in the traditional sense, it is something Chinese nonetheless. In a way, this view is in agreement with the position maintained by Xie Tianzhen when he said that ‘translated literature [made in Chinese] … should be regarded as part of China’s ethnic or national literature. To us, translated literature [in Chinese] is a component part of Chinese literature.’3 (Xie 1999, p. 239) Therefore, it is only right not to equate the system of Chinese translation theory or discourse to its traditional part, as has often been the case in the field. Chinese discourse on translation, as a system, is more sensibly thought to be composed of not just what has happened in the past, but also what is happening right now as well as what will happen in the future times in the Chinese TS field. This way of understanding will enable us to both conclude that the perceptions of the activity of translating/interpreting, the prerequisites for the translator/interpreter and the fundamental principle of translational faithfulness, as discussed in Sect. 2, will readily stand as some of the most representative aspects of Chinese translation discourse; and that the various characteristics of contemporary Chinese thinking and development, as discussed in Sect. 3, should also be looked to as contributing to what is the Chinese system of translation discourse. In other words, such happenings as the following that have been found over the last 40 years or so in the contemporary Chinese TS field should and can all be regarded as features that carry a distinctive ‘Chineseness’: (a) an enhanced and modernised theoretical awareness about translation; (b) large-scale importation of non-Chinese theoretical approaches to translation; (c) the long-standing thoughts and debates on whether translation is a science, an art 3 My

translation from the Chinese original: “翻译文学…...应该是民族文学或国别文学的一部 分, 对我们来说, 翻译文学就是中国文学的一个组成部分。”.

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or a technology, or whether there is or there should be the development of translation studies as an independent and autonomous academic/scientific discipline; (e) the critical reflections on foreign borrowing and revisiting of traditional Chinese discourse; (f) the institutional planning for outbound strategic cultural initiatives in translation; (g) the innovative AI applications in translation and corpus-based TS research; and unstopping endeavours and progress made in the field of translation teaching and translation degree education (including the professional degree of MTI [Master of Translation and Interpreting]); (i) the increasingly active engagement in dialogue on translation theory on the international TS arena; and so forth. This thus leads us further to the conclusion that Chinese discourse on translation or Chinese translation theory, insofar as it is considered ‘a system of its own’, should not just cover how it evolved in the past but also how it is evolving at the present time and even how it may evolve in the future. For even though what is happening now may not seem at the present time ‘characteristically Chinese’, especially when looked at from the more ‘traditionalist’ point of view, it will, in turn, become ‘something of the past’ in the future. Then what would one say about this part of ‘the tradition or system’ if it were categorically dismissed from its earlier, ‘contemporary’ phase of development as ‘non-Chinese’? In the last analysis, wouldn’t this kind of ‘non-Chineseness’ be a ‘Chinese feature’ of the Chinese system of translational discourse too?

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Cheung, M. (2006). An Anthology of Chinese Discourse on Translation, Vol. 1: From Earliest Times to the Buddhist Project. Manchester, UK: St. Jerome Publishing. Cheung, M. (2017). An Anthology of Chinese Discourse on Translation. Vol. 2: From the Late Twelfth Century to 1800 (R. Neather, Ed.). Abingdon, Oxon and New York: Routledge. Gui, Q. (1986). Wei Qieli Juyou Zhongguo Tese de Fanyixue er Nuli (Working towards the establishment of a translatology with Chinese characteristics), Zhongguo Fanyi (Chinese Translators Journal), 3, 12–15. [桂干元. (1986). 为确立具有中国特色的翻译学而努力—从国外翻译学 谈起.《中国翻译》 , 3, 12–15]. Han, Z. (2000). Fanyixue Bushi Meng—Jianyu Zhang Jinghao Xianshen Shangque (Translatology is Not a Dream—Some Different Reflections on Translatology). Waiyu Yu Waiyu Jiaoxue (Foreign Languages and Their Teaching), 7, 50–52, Cover 3 [韩子满. (2000). 翻译学不是梦—兼与张 经浩先生商榷.《外语与外语教学》 , 7, 50–52, 封3]. He, W. (2000). Fanyixue: Lishi Yu Luoji de Biran (Translatology: A Historical and Logical Necessity of Translation Studies). Waiyu Yu Waiyu Jiaoxue (Foreign Languages and Their Teaching), 7, 43–46. [贺微. (2000). 翻译学: 历史与逻辑的必然.《外语与外语教学》 , 7, 43–46]. Hou, X. (2000). Fanyi Weihe Buke Wei “Xue”?—Du Fanyixue: Yige Weiyuan Qie Nanyuan de Meng (Why not Translatology?). Waiyu Yu Waiyu Jiaoxue (Foreign Languages and Their Teaching), 7, 39–42, 46. [侯向群. (2000). 翻译为何不可为“学”?—读《翻译学: 一个未圆 且 难圆的梦》 《 . 外语与外语教学》 , 7, 39–42, 46]. Kelly, L. G. (1979). The true interpreter: A history of translation theory and practice in the West. Oxford: Blackwell. Lan, F. (1988). Kexue yu Yishu zhi Zheng—Fanyi Yanjiu Fangfalun Sikao (Science vs. Art: Methodological reflections on translation studies). Zhongguo Fanyi (Chinese Translators Journal), 4, 2–6. [蓝峰. (1988). 科学与艺术之争—翻译研究方法论思考.《中国翻译》 , 4, 2–6]. Lao, L. (1996). Diudiao Huanxiang, Lianxi Shijian—Jiepo “Fanyi(ke)xue” de Mimeng (Throw away illusions and be integrated with practice: Breaking the unrealisable dream of the “Science of Translation”). Zhongguo Fanyi (Chinese Translators Journal), 2, 38–41. [劳陇. (1996). 丢掉 幻想, 联系实践—揭破 “翻译(科)学” 的迷梦. 《中国翻译》 , 2, 38–41]. Lefevere, A. (1992). Translating/history/culture: A sourcebook. London and New York: Routledge. Lin, S. (1981). Naida de Fanyi Lilun Jianjie (A brief introduction to Nida’s translation theory). Guowai Yuyanxue (Linguistics Abroad), 2, 1–14. [林书武. (1981). 奈达的翻译理论简介.《国 外语言学 》 , 2, 1–14]. Liu, M. (1989). Lun Zhongguo Fanyi Lilun Jiben Moshi (The Basic Mode of Chinese Translation Theory), Zhongguo Fanyi (Chinese Translators Journal), 1, 12–16. [刘宓庆. (1989). 论中国翻 译理论基本模式 《中国翻译》 ]. Liu, M. (1993). Zhongguo Xiandai Fanyi Lilun de Renwu (Tasks of modern translation theory in China). Waiguoyu (Journal of Foreign Languages), 2, 4–8, 82. [刘宓庆. (2005). 中国现代翻译 理论的任务—为杨自俭编著之 《翻译新论》 而作’《外国语》 , 2, 4–8, 82]. Liu, Z. (1995). Guanyu Jianli Fanyixue de Yixie Xiangfa (Some Reflections on Developing a Translatology). Waiguoyu (Journal of Foreign Languages), 2, 27–31. [刘重德. (1995). 关于建 立翻译学的一些看法.《外国语》 , 2, 27–31]. Liu, Z. (2000). Shishi Sheng Xiongbian—Yetan Woguo Chuantong Yilun De Chengjiu He Yixue Jianshe De Xianzhuang (Facts speak louder than words—Concerning the achievements in the study of Chinese traditional translation theories and the present situation of the construction of translatology in China). Waiyu Yu Waiyu Jiaoxue (Foreign Languages and Their Teaching), 7, 34– 38. [刘重德. (2000). 事实胜雄辩——也谈我国传统译论的成就和译学建设的现状. 《外 889 语与外语教学》 , 7: 34–38]. Liu, M. (2005). Zhonhguo Fanyi Sixiang Bijiao Yanjiu (A Comparative Study of Chinese and Western Thinking on Translation). Beijing: The China Translation and Publishing Corporation. [刘宓庆. (2005).《中西翻译思想比较研究》 . 北京: 中国对外翻译出版有限公司]. Luo, X. (1983). Woguo Zicheng Tixi de Fanyi Lilun (Chinese translation theory: A system of its own). Fanyi Tongxun (The Translators’ Notes), 7, 9–13; 8, 8–12. [罗新璋. (1983). 我国自成体 系的翻译理论.《翻译通讯》 , 7, 9–13; 8, 8–12].

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Luo, X. (Eds.). (1984). Fanyi Lunji (An Anthology of Essays on Translation). Beijing: The Commercial Press [罗新璋 (编). (1984).《翻译论集》 . 北京: 商务印书馆]. Luo, X. & Chen, Y. (Eds.). (2009). Fanyi Lunji (An Anthology of Essays on Translation [Revised edition]). Beijing: The Commercial Press. [罗新璋, 陈应年(编). (2009).《翻译论集(修订版)》 . 北京: 商务印书馆]. Mu, L. (1991). Fanyide Yuyanxue Lilun. (A Translation of John Catford’s A Linguistic Theory of Translation). Beijing: The Tourist Education Press. [穆雷. (1991).《翻译的语言学理论》 . 北京: 旅游教育出版社]. Qian, L. (1988). Duzhe de Fanying Neng Zuowei Pingjie Yiwen de Biaozhunma? (Can reader’s response be used as a criterion for assessing the quality of a translation?). Guongguo Fanyi (Chinese Translators Journal), 2, 42–44. [钱霖生. (1988). 读者的反应能作为评价译文的标准 吗?—向金堤、奈达两位学者请教.《中国翻译》 , 2, 42–44. Robinson, D. (1997). Western Translation Theory: From Herodotus to Nietzsche. Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press. Manchester: St. Jerome Publishing. Steiner, G. (1975). After Babel: Aspects of Language and Translation (Third edition published in 1998). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Steyerl, H. (2019). Beyond culture: The politics of translation. Accessed on October 28, 2019. http://translate.eipcp.net/concept/index_html/steyerl-concept-en.html. Sun, H. (1988). Fanyi Lilun yu Fanyi Jiaoxuefa (A Translation of Jean Delisle’ L’analyse du discours comme methode de traduction). Beijing: The International Cultures Press. [孙慧双. (1988).《翻 译理论与翻译教学法》 . 北京: 国际文化出版社]. Sun, Z. (1997). Guanyu Woguo Fanyi Lilun Jianshe de Jidian Sikao (A few thoughts on the development of China’s translation theory). Guongguo Fanyi (Chinese Translators Journal), 2, 10–12. [孙致礼. (1997). 关于我国翻译理论建设的几点思考.《中国翻译》 , 2, 10–12]. Tan, Z. (1984). Naida Lun Fanyi (Nida on translation). Beijing: The China Translation and Publishing Corporation. [谭载喜. (1984).《奈达论翻译》 . 北京: 中国对外翻译出版有限公司]. Tan, Z. (1987). Bixu Jianli Fanyixue (The necessity of developing a science of translation). Zhongguo Fanyi (Chinese Translators Journal), 3, 2–8. [谭载喜. (1987). 必须建立翻译学.《中国翻译》 , 3, 2–8]. Tan, Z. (1997). Reflections on the science of translation. Babel, 43(4), 332–352. Tan, Z. (2000). Fanyixue (The Science of translation). Wuhan: The Hubei Education Press. Reprinted in 2005. [谭载喜. (2000). 《翻译学》 . 武汉: 湖北教育出版社. 2005年重印]. Tan, Z. (2004). Chinese translation theory—A system of its own (translated from the Chinese by Luo Xinzhang). In L. T. Chan (Ed.) Twentieth-Century Chinese translation theory: Modes, issues and debates (pp. 230–235). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Tan, Z. (2009a). Nida in China: Influences that last. In R. Dimitriu & M. Shlesinger (Eds.). Translators and their readers. In Homage to Eugene A. Nida (pp. 61–78). Bruxelles: Les Editions du Hazard. Tan, Z. (2009b). The “Chineseness” versus “non-Chineseness” of Chinese translation theory: An ethnoconvergent perspective. The Translator: Studies in Intercultural Communication, 15(2), 283–304. Tan, Z. (2012). Fanyi yu Fanyi Yanjiu Gailun—Renzhi Shijiao Keti (Translation and Translation Studies: Perceptions, Perspectives and Methodology). Beijing: The China Translation and Publishing Corporation [谭载喜. 2012.《翻译与翻译研究概论—认知•视角•课题》 . 北京: 中国 对外翻译出版有限公司.]. Tan, Z. (2014). Degree education in translation studies in Hong Kong: Theories, philosophies and practices. East Journal of Translation (Special Issue), 48–59. Tan, Z. (2017). Translation Studies as a discipline in the Chinese academia. In C. Shei & Z. Gao (Eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Chinese Translation. London and New York: Routledge. Tan, Z. (2019). Chinese discourse on translation: Views and issues. In Z. Han & D. Li (Eds.), Translation studies in China: The state of the art. Springer Nature Pte Ltd: Singapore. Wang, H. (2003). Zhongguo Chuantong Yilun Jingdian Quanshi: Cong Daoan Dao Fulei (Critique of Translation Theories in the Chinese Tradition: From Dao An to Fu Lei). Wuhan: The Hubei

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Education Press. [王宏印. (2003).《中国传统译论经典诠释: 从道安到傅雷》 . 武汉: 湖北教960 育出版社]. Wang, D. & Chu, Z. (1996). Fanyixue Zhi Wojian (Our Views on Translatology). WaiGuoyu (Journal of Foreign Languages), 5, 8–12. [王东风, 楚至大. (1996). 翻译学之我见.《外国 语》 , 5, 8–12]. Wong, W. (1999). Chongshi “Xin Da Ya”: Ershi Shiji Zhongguo Fanyi Yanjiu (Reinterpreting XinDa-Ya: Translation Studies in China in the 20th Century). Shanghai: The Eastern Publishing Centre. [王宏志. (1999).《重释 “信达雅”: 二十世纪中国翻译研究》 ,上海:东方出版中心]. Wu, Y. (1994). Dui Fanyi Dengzhi Wenti de Sikao (Thoughts on the problems of translation equivalence). Zhongguo Fanyi (Chinese Translators Journal), 1, 2–4. [吴义诚. (1994). 对翻译等值 问题的思考.《中国翻译》 , 1, 2–4]. Xie, T. (1999). Yijiexue (Medio-translatology). Shanghai: The Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press. [谢天振. (1999).《译介学》 . 上海:上海外语教育出版社]. Xu, J. (2003). Fanyi Lun (On Translation). Wuhan: The Hubei Education Press [许钧. (2003).《翻 译论》 . 武汉: 湖北教育出版社]. Xu, J. (2009). 60 years of translation studies in New China. China Net [许钧. (2009). 新中国翻译 研究六十年. 中国网]. http://www.china.com.cn/culture/zhuanti/zgyxd6/2009–11/09/content_1 8853197.htm). Accessed December 1, 2018. Xu, J., & Mu, L. (Eds.). (2009). Fanyixue Gailun (Introducing Translation Studies). Nanjing: The Yilin Publishing House. [许钧, 穆雷(编). (2009).《翻译学概论》 . 南京: 译林出版社]. Yi, F. (1980). Xifang de Wenxue Fanyi (Literary translation in the West), Fanyi Tongxun (The Translators’ Notes), 3, 19–21. [一凡. (1980). 西方的文学翻译.《翻译通讯》 , 3, 19–21]. Zhang, J. (1999). Fanyixue: Yige Weiyuan qie Nanyuan de Meng (Translatology: An unrealised and unrealisable dream). Waiyu yu Waiyu Jiaoxue (Foreign Languages and Their Teaching), 10, 44–48. [张经浩. 翻译学: 一个未圆且难圆的梦.《外语与外语教学》 , 10, 44–48]. Zhang, J. (2006). Zhuci Diandao de Fanyi Yanjiu he Fanyi Lilun (Misplaced Priorities in Translation Studies and Translation Theory). Zhongguo Fanyi (Chinese Translators Journal), 5, 59–61. [张 经浩. (2006). 主次颠倒的翻译研究和翻译理论.《中国翻译》 , 5, 59–61]. Zhang, B. & Jiang, Q. (1997). Dui Jianli Zhongguo Fanyixue de Yixie Sikao (Some thoughts on the establishment of a Chinese translatology), Zhongguo Fanyi (Chinese Translators Journal), 3, 7–9, 16. [张柏然, 姜秋霞. (1997). 对建立中国翻译学的一些思考. 《中国翻译》 , 3, 7–9, 16]. Zhu, C. 2000. Zouchu Wuqu Tajin Shijie—Zhongguo Yixue: Fansi yu Qianzhan (Chinese translation studies: Reflections and forward looking). Zhongguo Fanyi (Chinese Translators Journal). l: 2–9. [朱纯深. 2000. 走出误区踏进世界—中国译学: 反思与前瞻.《中国翻译》 . l: 2–9.]. Zhu, C. (2004). Translation studies in China or Chinese-related translation studies: Defining Chinese translation studies’. Babel, 50(4), 332–345. Zhuang, Y. (1987). Tongtianta: Wenxue Fanyi Lilun yu Yanjiu. (A Transadaptation of George Steiner’s After Babel: Aspects of Language and Translation). Beijing: The China Translation and Publishing Corporation. [庄绎传. (1987).《通天塔: 文学翻译理论与研究》 . 北京: 中国对 外翻译出版公司].

Zaixi Tan is a Distinguished Professor at Shenzhen University, adjunct Chair Professor at Beijing Foreign Studies University and Professor Emeritus of Hong Kong Baptist University. He obtained his B.A. in English Language and Literature from Hunan Normal University (China), M.A. (by research) and Ph.D. in Translation Studies, both from the University of Exeter (UK). He is author of some 20 books including Translation Studies: The Making and Evolution of an Independent Discipline (Chi., 2017), Translation and Translation Studies: Perceptions, Perspectives and Methodology (Chi., 2012), A History of Translation in the West: Revised Edition (Chinese, 2004; 10th reprint in 2018), The Science of Translation (Chi., 2000/2005), Nida on Translation: A New Edition (Chi.,1999/2001). His major published translations include The Book of Twin Worlds (tr. of Shi Er’s《两界书》 , 2019), a translation of Shuttleworth & Cowie’s Dictionary of Translation Studies (2005) and a translation of Kingsley Amis’ Lucky Jim (2008/2013). He is also author of some 200 articles in major national, regional and international translation and language studies

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journals including Chinese Translators Journal (Chi.), Foreign Language Teaching and Research (Chi.), Foreign Languages (Chi.), Translation and Interpreting Studies, Meta, Neohelicon, The Translator, Perspectives, Across Languages and Cultures, Babel and Asia Pacific Translation and Intercultural Studies. His specialist interests include the theories and philosophies of translation; the cultural-politics of translation; historiography of translation; literary and media translation; contrastive English–Chinese language-cultural studies.

Teaching Translation and Culture Yifeng Sun

Abstract Translation teaching at a university level is much more than vocational training. A prevalent misconception among students is that acquiring a set of translation skills would provide them with the capability to translate competently. Nothing could be further from the truth. It is thus essential to hammer home to them that translation does not take place in a vacuum, and the learning of cross-cultural knowledge is for the benefit of students who should preferably be directed to confrontation with real translation problems in the process of training. The particular importance of cultural dimension to translation is brought in line with a shifting focus on foreign otherness, and this change of perspective and consciousness forces a rethinking of culture as a constituent part of translation training. Such training would equip students with analytical skills and enhance their resourcefulness and adaptability. A balanced curriculum that encompasses interrelated aspects of training can thus be achieved by matching students’ expectations and teachers’ pedagogical objectives. The benefits of practical training are limited without a reasonably high level of crosscultural awareness and knowledge. In a nutshell, translation teaching should not be instrumentalized and reduced to vocational training, and a shortsighted disregard of cultural context and its influence on decoding and translating a text will only inhibit the learning and development of students. Keywords Translation training · Cultural knowledge · Curriculum design · Cross-cultural communication · Bicultural competence

1 Introduction The cultural turn in the 1980s has been not only of profound significance to the development of Translation Studies, but also of important pedagogical implications to translation teaching. Globally, while translation programmes at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels are proliferating, there is a danger that many of them Y. Sun (B) University of Macau, Macau, China e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 L. Lim and D. Li (eds.), Key Issues in Translation Studies in China, New Frontiers in Translation Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-5865-8_2

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amount to no more than vocational training, concentrating almost entirely on helping students acquire practical skills of translation. At this moment, human translation is confronted with the challenge of artificial intelligence, and as a preemptive strategy to prepare students for the future, it is advisable for translation programmes to be designed in such a way so as to raise their cross-cultural awareness, knowledge and sensitivity, together with, needless to say, other aspects of intellectual training. While it is an often-repeated truism to emphasize that translation does not take place in a vacuum, in reality the lack of cross-cultural awareness and knowledge has prevented many translators from administering credible performance. The particular importance of cultural dimension to translation is brought in line with a shifting focus on otherness, and this change of perspective and consciousness forces a rethinking of culture as a constituent part of translation training. The challenge of translation stems from the intersection of cultural norms, traditions and values that pervade the source culture, in view of which translation teaching needs to engage students in identifying and resolving a wide range of translation problems. Thus, it is essential to train them to become cross-culturally prepared to perform translation tasks with a heightened awareness of and insight about the complex and dialogical nature of cultural differences caught up in the nuances of both source and target languages. Translation has long been considered as cross-cultural communication. Dealing with cultural references and representations is an essential prerequisite for the success of translation, which can only operate with an aggregate framework of cultural levels. It is often observed that cultural references and allusions staunchly resist translation, and due to this potential untranslatability, they cannot be directly transferred without losing much of the richness of the original cultural information. Over recent years, the pressing need to recognize the cultural dimension of language/translation has been accepted and even prioritized. Through translation, two disparate cultural systems come into contact, and conceivably, into conflict. Owing to different cultural perspectives and discourses, a possible distortion or dilution of the culture embedded in and represented by the source text can barely be avoided, and in any case, should be kept at a reasonably low level. In the process of doing translation, one is bound to encounter cross-cultural communication problems, but they can be surmounted if proper training is provided in a balanced curriculum. While students must acquire practical skills, which are knowledge based, their skills are to be developed through exposure to subtle or not so subtle cultural differences of various kinds. Translation training programmes are designed to help students identify and solve translation problems, often inextricably related to cultural issues, and then to develop an understanding of the methods and techniques commonly used for tackling these problems.

2 Historical Perspectives The cultural aspect of translation is highly complex and involves processes that are dynamic and interactive on the one hand, and confusing and frustrating, on

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the other. To enable students to acquire cross-cultural communication knowledge and skills is a pressing challenge for translation training. Traditionally, translation was primarily for the purpose of teaching a foreign language, with scant regard for cultural mediation. But the cultural dimension, though not manifestly visible, was not altogether conveniently circumvented. J. C. Catford in A Linguistic Theory of Translation published in 1965 clearly distinguishes two types of untranslatability, namely linguistic untranslatability and cultural untranslatability, and without any doubt that it is the latter certainly that poses a more serious challenge to translation. In general, students seem to be more acutely aware of linguistic untranslatability than cultural untranslatability. One compelling concern is that students making simplistic and stereotypical assumptions about translation, paying only cursory attention to cultural factors. In view of this inveterate inclination, it is all the more vital to emphasize that linguistic proficiency alone is insufficient. An awareness-raising training approach, which involves students analyzing culturally related translation problems, proves to be positively beneficial. Moreover, engaging students with cultural problems can create teaching incentives in proportion to the teachers’ efforts to encourage them to observe cultural forces at work and become more sophisticated in their ability to approach translation in relation to culture. It is impossible to teach translation without cultivating into students’ cross-cultural awareness, which has been defined as ‘an awareness of the otherness and differentness of other, or rather, of foreign cultures in all their complexity’ (Grosman 1994: 51). Thus, the ‘cultural’ aspect of the source text should be firmly on teaching agendas. Curiously, what seems to be obvious but still underemphasized in translation training is that without adequate cultural cultivation, translation tasks cannot be competently accomplished. A foreign, alien culture encompassed in the understanding of translation calls for cultural mediation and adaptation in the forms of transliteration, substitution, loans, assimilation, acculturation, etc. Translation is primarily about two languages yet not confined to the linguistic level. Over the years, an increasing number of translation training programmes has asked students to bear in mind the need of the target reader and that culture itself needs translation as well. Language and culture are interdependent and a spectrum of relationships with a different world needs to be presented in translation. André Lefevere has noted that ‘Translations have been made with the intention of influencing the development of a culture’ (Lefevere 2002: 8). This pronouncement is made by referring to the target culture. But needless to say, the source culture is also important, because it affords an inescapable part of the context in which the source text is originally produced. Lefevere proceeds to point out that ‘Translations are not made in a vacuum. Translators function in a given culture at a given time. The way they understand themselves and their culture is one of the factors that may influence the way in which they translate’ (Lefevere 2002: 14). This has served as a salutary reminder of the conditioning contingencies of culture, and students are well advised to engage in cross-cultural exploration so that it becomes possible to share different assumptions about and understandings of the nature of cultural problems in translation. To varying degrees, translation students have been introduced to different

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cultural perspectives that are responsible for and contribute to a spectrum of teaching and learning strategies. Translation problems concerning culture are specified by Christiane Nord as ‘cultural translation problems’ (Nord 1992: 46). These problems are further identified as ‘convention-related’ (Nord 2005: 175). Witte raises the central question of culture in relation to translation teaching: ‘How can we teach culture-specific behaviour patterns?’ (Witte 1996: 73). He discusses at length translators’ bicultural competence by drawing attention to ‘contrastive culture learning’ (Witte 1996: 75). The so-called proper and common ways to translate are prescribed by cultural norms, customs and relevant behavioural patterns that are shaped and defined by tradition and different cultural communities. Translation involves different sites and ways of engagement, and interaction and transformation. It would be therefore advisable to engage students with cultural problems in translation both from the perspectives of the source and target cultures. Depending on the demand of a given situation, the focal points of attention may vary, and so much so, students need to pay special attention to translation problems in relation to a specific cultural context in which these problems are examined and analyzed, and this can greatly improve teaching/learning outcomes.

3 Critical Issues and Topics Most significantly, cultural differences form the real part of a complex cultural reality and thus must not be trivialized as insignificant and marginalized as unimportant. Students often appear to be completely preoccupied with linguistic translatability or lack of it, while ignoring or disavowing differences that are in large measure attributable to culture. Such unreflective approaches to other cultures cannot possibly allow them to do justice to the multivalent functions and different registers of cultural exchange. They tend to be unaware of their own cultural locations, which play a functional role in contributing to their understanding of other cultures. Cross-cultural awareness is the key to open-mindedness, and the espousal of open-mindedness is revealed in a high level of cultural empathy and cross-cultural sensitivity. Moreover, culturally different perspectives and values characteristic of and represented by the source and target texts, respectively, reflect culturally different points of view and inclinations. Thus, it is imperative for students to analyze the different perspectives by comparing and contrasting them in relation to actual translation problems. Through reading and discussion, students can be sensitized to cultural differences in tackling difficult, culturally related problems in translation. The act of involving students in the process of finding solutions to cultural problems provides a road map for them to be well acquainted with the complexities of culture, which involves painstaking negotiation. Among a range of related considerations, Venuti highlights the cultural component of translating that might interest students when they are exposed to translation:

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A detailed comparison between a translation and the source text it translates can work towards these goals by focusing attention not only on lexicon and syntax, but also on patterns of meaning, and not only on denotation and connotation, but also on dialect and register, style and genre, intertextuality and intercultural relations. (Venuti 2013: 165)

These two sets of cultures present different challenges to how pedagogical strategies are designed. Among other things, the concept of intertextuality, also culturally related in many aspects, is critical in raising students’ cross-cultural awareness. It is thus important for students to be pointed to some sources of reading material and encouraged to explore other related sources to expand their cultural knowledge. Above all, to encourage background reading is an essential part of translation training. To train fully operational translators, translation training programs must be sufficiently rigorous and demanding so as to enhance students’ resourcefulness and adaptability. With regard to cultural differences, a crucial distinction needs to be made regarding whether it is translation into or out of one’s native language: many translation programmes train students to be competent in translating in both directions, which would involve different cross-cultural psychologies and as a result, culture-specific configurations are obtained differently. If a text is translated into their native language, students’ attention is drawn to foreign culture and they are thus enabled to capture the intrinsically foreign other. They are urged to be particularly attentive to incompatible and potentially conflicting values and beliefs as well. In addition, in translating out of their native language, they are trained to be aware of what is perceived to be culturally offensive for the target reader. Information for translation is processed through contextual links between history, politics and ideology. Different levels of cross-cultural exposure make a notable difference in students’ ability to communicate. Compared with their peers in mainland China, Hong Kong students are more exposed to the English language and Western cultures. Nevertheless, their cultural perspective is still somewhat limited, and for them, how to account for and perceive cultural differences remains a challenge. For some understandable reason, many translation students in Hong Kong, highly practical and goal-oriented, are obsessed with acquiring translation skills, misguidedly believing that these skills will equip them to enter the job market as competent translators, as if such skills were universally applicable to all translation situations. Of course, nothing is further from the truth. This popular misconception stems from a lack of awareness of cultural differences and their role relating to the nature of translation problems. While linguistic differences are only part of the barrier to translation, cultural differences are by no means trivial and will ultimately influence the quality of translation. Students must realize that they need to acquire both linguistic and cultural competencies, and that textual representation and cultural experience are not entirely the same thing. Douglas Howland is right in pointing out: ‘Rather than a simple transfer of words or texts from one language to another, on the model of the bilingual dictionary, translation has become understood as a translingual act of transcoding cultural material – a complex act of communication’ (Howland 2003: 45). Above all, translation is for the whole purpose of cross-cultural communication.

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Given that forms and norms in translation are culturally contingent, a simple transfer can result in culturally anomalous allusions that are either outlandish or unacceptable in the target language. For instance, it is perfectly fine to translate a Chinese proverb 说曹操, 曹操到 into ‘speak of the devil’. The culturally specific Chinese name 曹操 (Cao Cao) is replaced here. Then we have a translation version of ‘Well, speak of the devil, here’s Alice now!’ as ‘ , 说到曹操, 曹操就到, 瞧, 艾丽斯这不来啦!’ This translation literarily means speaking of Cao Cao, here he comes immediately. Cao Cao was a famous Chinese general and politician in the Eastern Han dynasty. Despite being something of a cliché, it sounds rather odd to juxtapose an ancient Chinese warlord with a young English girl, unless the proverb is regarded as a dead metaphor, just like ‘devil’ in the English idiom. In view of this, it is necessary to be sensitive to the specific factors underlying cross-cultural differences responsible for formulating culturally acceptable translation strategies in dealing with translation between culturally unrelated or less related texts and contexts. It needs to be emphasized to students that because cultural translatability is often limited, dynamic equivalence to operate at a cross-cultural interface and platform is what can be aimed at and attained. Contextualization and interpretation is essential to representing cultural differences. Revealing the vulnerability of culture in cross-cultural communication, translation training must emphasize the vital importance to aim at a non-reductionist approach to culture. Catford pinpoints what has led to cultural untranslatability ‘when a situational feature, functionally relevant for the source language text, is completely absent from the culture of which the TL is a part’ (1965: 99). Culture-bound idiosyncrasies are generally amenable to different cultural practices and customs. Translation involves not only two languages but also two cultural settings and contexts, and the resultant different forms of cultural reproduction need to be examined and adjusted. In dealing with cultural references, especially culture-specific items, students are well advised to contextualize all the cultural differences that can be identified and treated accordingly. As a common practice in Hong Kong and Macao, aside from lectures, tutorials are regarded by students as a very important component of curriculum design. During tutorials, small groups of students are formed and appear to work well together. They are particularly drawn to some highly specific cultural references and ready to explore and experiment with the desirability and feasibility of working out various solutions. Students’ interest is aroused through fostering their cultural imagination as they delve deeper into how different possibilities for understanding and presenting cultural complexities can really work. As a result, their efforts have become much more focused and interactive. Meanwhile, it is also necessary to underscore the value of holistic view of culture in relation to translation instead of being bogged down to specific details, which may turn out to be insurmountable and overwhelming. Moreover, with regard to cultural differences in translation, many students can be related to their own experiences of reading and encountering people of other cultural backgrounds. In a sense, translation is a reconstructive process, necessarily entailing restoration and reconstruction that requires cross-cultural knowledge and imagination. For this purpose, a different frame of reference needs to be established as part of the effort to negotiate

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cross-cultural terms. The inevitability of variation in translation must be understood at a cognitive level. Though translation is founded on some underlying similarities between the source and target texts, it may be characterized by a plethora of variants, particularly in a cultural sense. Cross-cultural contacts bring into the target language system new linguistic and cultural elements, which in turn add new variational properties to the target language. Teaching translation is riveted on the process of moving from word to sentence to paragraph and finally to passage. Such a gradual incremental process serves the purpose of helping students to improve their reading, translation and writing skills as a complex of interrelated activities. Each cultural community has its own habits, value judgments and ways of thinking, and for this reason, cultural substitution, though necessary and inevitable from time to time, is a less than ideal way of translating what seems to resist straightforward translation and thus needs to be handled with caution. But very often, cultural meaning in its proper context requires due attention the so-called culturally equivalent. For instance, ‘for God’s sake’ or ‘or Pete’s sake’ may be modified as ‘for heavens’ sake’ if the implied religious reference is deemed not entirely appropriate. Of course, as inexperienced translators, students are reminded to identify dead metaphors in the source text with their figurative value diminishing and to make sure that they are conceptually appropriated and reproduced in translation. Students should be aware that to be insensitive to cultural differences may well jeopardize translation especially in terms of its cultural dimensions. Yet introducing cultural dimensions into translation exercises adds a further complication to the concern about linguistic untranslatability. Thus, asking students to concentrate on examining the nature of cultural differences can be an effective method of consciousness-raising and engagement. However, somewhat contrary to expectation, sometimes it is precisely the cultural differences that attract the interests of students. Cultural equivalence is hard to come by and students are therefore asked to think about and deal with different types or degrees of cultural untranslatability.

4 Current Contributions and Research Quite a few books have been published recently in the field of translation teaching, including, among others, Teaching Translation: Programs, Courses, Pedagogies edited by Lawrence Venuti and Teaching and Researching Translation by Basil Hatim. It is noteworthy that how language should be taught is linked with translation teaching. On the surface, it seems to be a revived interest, but in fact has been a continuing concern for translation educators and trainers. Donald C. Kiraly, for example, devotes one chapter of his book to the discussion of the relationship between translation teaching and foreign language teaching (1995: 20). The relevance of translation remains unchanged. Be it foreign language teaching or the teaching of translation, culture teaching plays a prominent role, and if anything, much more so in training students to become culturally competent translators. In this respect,

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culture has become increasingly a crucial concern for teachers of translation. Attention has been drawn to the absence of cultural equivalence in the target culture: ‘As a source culture experience can be non-existent in the target culture, there may not be words available in the target language to describe this non-existence experience’ (Kaluzna 2012: 202). There is a proposed solution: ‘Following just words can lead the translator astray and this is where the translator should turn towards analyzing the meaning rather than words’ (Kaluzna 2012: 202). One of the great pedagogical challenges is to improve students’ problem-solving abilities. To this end, they need to gain the relevant cultural knowledge to combat potential cultural untranslatability— there are different types or degrees of them—translation students are required to prepare themselves for dealing culturally shaped material to be translated. And they need to be constantly reminded that translation does not take place in a vacuum. Translation can be conditioned and influenced by a wide range of cultural references and allusions. A great deal of importance used to be attached to bilingual competence in translation training, yet it has become increasingly clear now that biculturalism is equally important, if not more so, for teachers and students alike. With this understanding, teachers can select many translation cases to illustrate the overriding centrality of cross-cultural sensitivity in solving translation problems. Meanwhile, an aggregate framework of cultural levels needs to be presented to students in order to facilitate cross-cultural knowledge sharing. As is emphasized by Bhugra and Poole, ‘Cultural sensitivity is the recognition and respect for diversity of values, practices and beliefs, a willingness to learn more about cultures other than one’s own and the avoidance of cultural stereotyping’ (2011: 12). Moving from one cultural context to another, translation leads to contextual shifts of some kind, producing a host of changes resulting from cultural adaptation, transliteration, cultural substitution, loans, cultural assimilation, acculturation, etc. Once students are introduced to different cultural sites of engagement, they will be able to learn different cultural conventions and schemas. In order for students to build a greater understanding and knowledge of cultural issues, a variety of courses can be designed in such a way that they are strategically correlated to each other and fully integrated to show students how these ‘cultural courses’ function as a prerequisite for taking translation courses. It has become increasingly common that cultural knowledge is incorporated into translation training programmes. Take for example the Department of Translation at Lingnan University, Hong Kong where I taught until about a year ago when I joined the University of Macau. It has offered a variety of courses with regard to cultural knowledge to help students appreciate how to produce culturally literate and communicative translations. One of the required courses is ‘Literature, Culture and Translation’ with the aim to introduce students to literature in relation to culture and translation. Literary works of different historical periods and from both Western and Chinese cultural traditions spanning a variety of genres are used as teaching materials. Basic reading and writing techniques are central to the training process, and students are engaged in reading and discussing the carefully selected texts and as a result, respect for and appreciation of cultural differences deriving from understanding have been

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fostered. Through classroom, library and online formats, students explore all sorts of available materials in preparation for group presentations. With increasingly acquired and accumulated cultural knowledge, students are able to analyze texts prior to starting to do translation. While engaged in efforts to decode the cultural meaning inherent in the source text, they also have in mind how to formulate appropriate translation strategies. Sometimes the linguistic and cultural differences are substantial enough to constitute the core of what is understood as cultural spaces in which cultural exchanges takes place. For the purpose of heightening students’ awareness of cultural differences that reflect a variety of competing diverse and conflicting values, students at Lingnan are sometimes asked to concentrate on translating cultural allusions and references, and to discuss the nature of the allusions and references while searching for solutions. In this connection, circumspect rather than simplistic interpretation of cultures is essential and circumstantial: if translating out of students’ native language, there is a good chance that the interpretation of the target culture is less adequate and sensitive. In light of this observation, students are encouraged to create cross-cultural imagination by drawing on literary and cultural resources available to them. The extensive student exchange programmes are particularly beneficial in opening up and enlarging their cultural minds. They normally spend a term in an overseas university. In order to become culturally literate, cross-cultural contacts and exchanges are of crucial significance. In training translation practitioners, it can be said that contextual knowledge is background knowledge, and also cultural knowledge that needs to be enlarged to enable students to perform competently as translators. To reiterate what has been said earlier, cultural literacy is the principal requirement for cross-cultural communication and for training translation students. One important thing is to establish the contextual links between history, politics and culture in considering ways of understanding and solving translation problems while recognizing incompatible and conflicting values and beliefs. As for Chinese-English translation, the challenging nature of translation problems for the students whose native language is not English is exacerbated by their insufficient cultural knowledge. Consequently, to develop their English writing abilities is one of the pedagogical priorities for them. After building up a solid foundation of knowledge, they are introduced to some basic techniques in specialized translation in areas such as the arts, the media, business and popular culture. They are introduced to the general approaches and the specific methods for translating from Chinese into English. Further, emphasis is laid upon developing students’ linguistic and cultural knowledge to understand different aspects of Western (Anglo-American) culture and they should also be aware the gap between Westerners’ and their own knowledge of Chinese culture. This comparative knowledge is of great value in enabling students to find ways to bridge the gap when performing Chinese-English translations. The complex function of cultural elements in translation is connected with cultural resources in a pedagogical sense. The necessary cultural knowledge is a crucial prerequisite for cultural competence on the part of students, and translation, as has been reiterated here, is much more than just overcoming linguistic boundaries. The organic link between culture and translation, in both conceptual and historical

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terms, is manifested through repeated emphasis on their close interrelationship. For example, at Lingnan University in Hong Kong and the University of Macau, students are frequently asked to identify cultural patterns and nuances and to pay special attention to culturally specific elements in a text for translation. With regard to translation from Chinese into English, to explain Chinese culture to the West, can be a very challenging task. Once again, the problem of cultural knowledge, or more precisely, cross-cultural knowledge, or bicultural knowledge, shows precisely that translation is none other than a transcultural activity. In many cases, a mere cultural transfer may well turn out to be unworkable and consequently, a certain form of appropriation is inevitable, and students will soon learn that it is an inseparable part of cultural translation. Again, what is required is the ability to gain the necessary knowledge to establish the cultural context for the production of the source text, and also correspondingly, to re-create an appropriate cultural context for the production of the target text. To this end, a translation training programme should be designed to acquaint students with the relevant knowledge in order to enable them to work successfully through a series of exercises to develop their bicultural competence. The main point is that the design of such a programme creates manifold opportunities for students to identify problems and work out solutions, through which they will be able to grasp the complexities of intercultural communication. Bicultural competence also means not only an open-minded attitude towards cultural difference and diversity but also a resourceful approach to culture-specific items such as puns and jokes and metaphors. For the sake of easy understanding, the cultural traditions of China and the West are compared whenever necessary not only to help students realize the value of their own cultural tradition but also that of Western cultural tradition, including various aspects of cultural life and everyday social practices, all of them forming broad ramifications to new perspectives and insights. As a result, students can become increasingly aware of how all these markedly different traditions are mixed in the process of translation.

5 Recommendations for Practice The question of literal translation can be taken into account for assessing whether such an act of translation can be an effective way of communicating messages from one language/culture to another. Literal translation often risks incomprehension, and to dispel the popular misconception among novice translators that out of context dictionary definitions can be lifted and applied without necessary appropriation, it is essential to demonstrate to students that this ‘approach’ will only cause translation to reach an impasse. Thus, one should not overlook the fact that the limited usefulness of bilingual dictionaries is underscored from time to time when students who rely too heavily on them are invariably disappointed. In the absence of contextual information that is often culturally rooted, it is difficult for students to determine how exactly the words or phrases they have found behave in a cross-cultural situation. Moreover, since translation is not immune from the cultural asymmetry between

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two languages, successful translation is premised on both the mediation and negotiation of cultures. But due to the fact that a cultural form to be reproduced both literally and meaningfully seems like an impossible task, cultural appropriation is widely seen as key to overcoming potential untranslatability. Because the translation is restricted and governed by cultural norms and conventions shaped by the standards of a particular society, which are most likely to be different from our own, simple acts of transfer of cultural form are unlikely to help cross communicative borders. There are certain regulated ‘proper’ ways to do so, which are molded and refined by social and cultural norms and practices deriving from a different cultural tradition. Cultural (re)contextualization in which students are advised to consider carefully any possible cultural implications to translation is a regular part of our training exercises. An increasing emphasis on the cultural aspects of translation indicates that more efforts have been made to translate not just the basic meaning but also the preexisting cultural form. And as a rule, cultural differences are foregrounded and expected to be presented in translation, thereby posing a serious challenge to translation training as well. In any case, the performance of translation gives rise to a plurality of factors to be considered. Aram A. Yengoyan contends: The challenge for translation is that it must convey simultaneously both difference and similarity of meaning. Thus translations, cultural or linguistic, might be full of misery and fraught with problems which are almost insurmountable, but we must realize that translations are performed so that difference is always presented as part of our quest for understanding the variability in the human condition. (Yengoyan 2003: 41)

Cross-cultural understanding is not possible unless cultural differences are regarded and treated as intrinsic to cultural translation. Aside from important commonalities across cultures, it is no doubt essential to focus on differences by paying meticulous attention to subtleties and nuances in the source text. Once again, cultural knowledge serves to highlight the fact that because bilingual competence alone is apparently not enough to solve the problems of cross-cultural communication, it can be argued that how to make translation operational is what concerns the teaching of translation in relation to culture. Different forms of thinking and understanding give rise to different kinds of interpretation and consequently cultural meaning. The direct implications are significant enough to cause students of translation to examine the complexities of culture, which require delicate negotiation in the form of cultural appropriation. Hybrid forms of cultural interaction are reflected in the resulting translation versions. Take the phrase ‘a stab in the back’ for example. It is normally translated into Chinese as ‘暗箭伤人’, whose literal back translation would be an arrow shot from a hidden place. The basic tenet of underhandedness and unexpectedness is captured but not without a certain degree of appropriation. The weapon associated with ‘stab’ is a knife. In the Chinese cultural context, arrow is a more familiar metaphor. Yet this unimpeachable appropriation seems unnecessary and also somewhat less effective because it does not bring out the effect of the immediate extreme vulnerability to harm. An arrow shot from a hidden place can be from any direction, not necessarily from behind, which is more cowardly and devious. Some people have translated this metaphor literally as ‘背后捅刀’, which

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matches precisely ‘stab in the back’. It is direct and forceful and works perfectly well in Chinese. Then there is also a ‘compromised’ version: 背后冷箭 meaning ‘an arrow shot from behind’. All the above versions, when compared with one another, illustrate how the most effective version can be achieved. As an intrinsic part of cross-cultural communication, translation requires cultural sensitivity, resulting in all kinds of measures of appropriation, including most notably, adaptation. Winkelman emphasizes the necessity of adaptation in translation: Cultural sensitivity involves the ability to accommodate to cultural differences through appropriate adaptations. Adaptation involves making appropriate adjustments for interactions with people from other cultures by adjusting behaviour and communication to cultural differences. (Winkelman 2008: 89)

But then a series of questions need to be raised to students. An idiomatic cultural form poses a challenge to translation. Should it be taken seriously? How seriously? Should it be translated idiomatically as well? If so, is the resulting domestication as in many cases truly desirable in the sense of cross-cultural communication? Students are encouraged to discuss all these questions in relation to their translation training. To interpret and represent is essentially about understanding and the evidence of understanding is subsequently shown in translation. Echoing Benjamin and Berman, William Hanks and Carlo Severi speak of ‘loss of features from the original’ and adding in ‘supplementary features absent from the original.’1 In his translation of Yes, Prime Minister, the remark by the prime minister that government must be impartial is translated by Chang Nam Fung in a bold and animated manner: ‘It is not proper for us to take sides as between health and cigarette’ is rendered as ‘政府必须一碗水端 平, 不应在健康与吸烟之间支一派打一派’ and the translator expounds the rational for this proactive approach (Chang 2005: 202 and 241). Allusions/references to the Cultural Revolution in China are added in the translated text. A back translation reveals the extent to which how much is interpolated using indigenous materials: ‘Government must hold a bowl of water steady (not to spill it). It is not proper for us to support one faction (of Red Guards representing health) and to suppress another faction (of Red Guards who endorse smoking)’. The translator transforms the translation into a different paradigm of self-referentiality in order to increase readability, or as a means of compensation for diminished humour that is lost elsewhere in the translation. In the main, transformation as embodied in substitution with regard to metaphors and allusions is indeed helpful in tackling untranslatability, though it entails an intrinsically violent act, and is certainly not uncommon among some translators. Yet Chang’s strategy is much more daring and represents a functionalist approach that bypasses the imagined or anticipated less interesting translation and proves to be aesthetically pleasing, if perhaps also somewhat grotesque, to the target reader. However, students are not advised to do the same in their translation exercises. There is a perfect straightforward translation: 健康与吸烟之争 (Government should take no sides in the argument between health and smoking). 1 “Translating

worlds: The epistemological space of translation”, Journal of Ethnographic Theory. http://dx.doi.org/10.14318/hau4.2.001. Accessed on 6 March, 2016.

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Cultural proficiency is a precondition for translation as an act of appropriation (Copeland 1995: 186). It is through negotiating spaces of cultural complexities that students are given opportunities to employ their resourcefulness and ingenuity. Considering the potential usefulness of this the training of this kind, one of the pedagogical strategies is to single out specific translation problems for students to concentrate on in-classroom teaching so as to promote empowerment and professional actualization. Translation is not just about how to comply with cultural norms in various situations, but also about how to mediate and negotiate complex ways of working through linguistic and cultural differences. In addition, translation introduces an intersection of cultural practices, traditions, and worldviews as found in specific situations. And students’ acquisition of the necessary means of solving translation problems from a large variety of sources, both literary and non-literary, enables them to overcome cultural barriers with regard to translation. In a nutshell, cultural appropriation is characterized by ‘indirectness’ that is adopted to evade what is perceived to be untranslatable on the grounds that direct translation verging on literalness tends to debilitate and limit cultural translatability. In order to help the target reader to overcome comprehension hurdles pertaining to cultural untranslatability, ‘thick translation’ proposed by Kwame Anthony Appiah as a mode of adequate cross-cultural articulation is sometimes used. Despite its pragmatic usefulness—indeed students should be reminded that cross-cultural communication cannot be taken for granted and they are urged to find ways to address the communicative needs, it is still necessary to question the practical value of ‘thick translation’ as a strategy. Students are advised to refrain from resorting to lengthy exposition in the form of footnotes. Instead, they are urged to look more closely at the context which may well shed light on the exact meaning of a word or phrase. Translation is based on cross-cultural negotiation through making decisions as to what to retain, to reproduce, to elide or to change. But on the whole, students are instructed not to offer commentary or over-interpretation. Among other things, cultural referentiality underlines the challenging nature of translation in relation to culture. Obviously, an unmediated translation rarely has a chance to work and passivity on the part of the translator can only lead to dysfunctional translation. One effective way to train translation students to treat cultural references or allusions is to show them a range of possible skills that can be acquired through studying and comparing existing translations, and then translating previously untranslated texts within a cross-cultural interface and platform. Translating cultural references requires complex cross-cultural mediation and negotiation, and because of this, the notion of transculturation can have direct bearings on the way in which to work out how cultural information can be connected with the target system by merging different cultural elements so that what appears to be incommensurable can be bridged. Since forms and norms are culturally contingent and empirically inseparable, cultural references and allusions warrant creative exploration.

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6 Conclusions and Future Directions It is well-known, as observed by Paula Rubel and Abraham Rosman, that ‘The values of the culture of the source language may be different from those of the target language and this difference must be dealt with in any kind of translation’ (2003: 6). The next question is: What are translators supposed to do about this? It is often said that translation is constantly in need of compensation to overcome potential cultural deprivation. It is worth pointing out that the ever-increasing globalization results in readers’ significantly reduced willingness to put up with cultural deprivation: they demand fuller transmission of cultural information. In the essay ‘On the Different Methods of Translation’, Schleiermacher proposes the famous dilemma of translation: Either the target reader is sent to the author or vice versa. He strongly countenances the former, namely the translator taking the reader to the author. Whatever the motive behind this preference, with increasing globalization and the resultant cosmopolitanism, it has become less difficult and more necessary for the target reader to be sent to the author. Nevertheless, sending the reader to the author can still be a risky business, and the reader may lack the requisite cultural knowledge to understand the translated text. Ultimately, it is the outcome of communication that matters and the effectiveness of communication depends on successfully overcoming cultural barriers. Cross-cultural challenge remains unchanged, even though it may appear to be less formidable than before. The target reader has become more demanding, expecting to learn more about other cultures and to experience more directly the interaction with the foreign. But this does not mean that in the absence of appropriation, translation in a cultural sense can work. The training of translation students will focus more on the circumstances surrounding what is or may be culturally untranslatable, and for this reason, translation underlines the necessity of contingency and resourcefulness. While it is necessary to interpretively translate the seemingly untranslatable, the cultural dimension has to be given the paramount consideration. It is not surprising that there are different forms of cultural reproduction. It is now broadly understood that translation involves not only two languages but also two cultural settings and contexts associated with different traditions and communities whose cultural practices differ from one another, sometimes quite substantially. Moreover, since translation entails crossing from one cultural context to another, such contextual shifts culminate in transformation of some kind. Students soon learn that culture itself needs translation apart from the linguistic message. Cultural factors are both empowering and constraining. The so-called proper and common ways to translate are prescribed by cultural norms, customs and relevant behavioural patterns that have been created and nurtured by tradition. Translation comprises different ways of engagement, interaction and transformation. To engage students with cultural problems, attempts must be made to help them capture the complexity of cross-cultural contexts. One example should illustrate this point. Chinese calligraphy, supposedly the epitome of Chinese culture, is closely related to 气. Depending on the context, this Chinese character has a number of meanings.

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Its basic meaning can be breath, but also vitality or ether. It is intrinsically about the spirituality of Chinese calligraphy, and the brush manoeuvring demonstrates composure and aplomb, symptomatic of the quality of life and energy. Sometimes students seem to take all these or similar cultural meanings for granted, mistakenly assuming that they do not need to do anything other than simply find the ‘equivalent’ word from a dictionary, which would take care of the whole matter regardless of the specific context in which the character 气 appears. To compound the problem further, when the character 气 is combined with 韵, which itself can mean a host of things such as charm, appeal, flavour, pleasing quality or a delightful hint of something, to constitute a word 气韵, and then the meaning becomes more specific: lively spirit or vividness and vitality. Whatever the case may be, the expositional information needs to be provided as part of the translation so as to refer to brushwork that yields dynamic energy and force. Metaphors are not always easy to translate, and definitely more difficult to transfer into the target language. Maintaining cultural specificity in translation, though no doubt cross-culturally desirable, can sometimes be problematic. In the absence of an equivalent metaphor in the target language, there is compelling reason to just translate meaning. However, there is an apparent need to point out to students what is involved in certain cases is probably a dead metaphor, hence hardly any need to preserve the original form in translation while explaining its meaning. Dead metaphors and clichéd expressions should be identified and treated accordingly in translation. In addition, students’ attention can be drawn to the collocational nuances of words or phrases chosen for a particular translation situation, in which different versions are experimented for the purpose of comparison. Meanwhile, we must not overlook the fact that to grasp the subtlety of the crosscultural experience is crucial to any successful translation. Therefore, cultural forms and settings must be made to interact with one another so that the translated text can avoid impeding a cultural discourse as part of cross-cultural communication. As pointed out by André Lefevere, ‘To make a foreign work of literature acceptable to the receiving culture, translators will often adapt it to the poetics of that receiving culture’ (Lefevere 2002: 7). A certain degree of adaptation has to be made for the sake of reception, although there may be a danger that a translation subjected to excessive rearrangement is identified as, strictly speaking, adaptation rather than translation in its conventional sense. The complexity of adaptation to the target culture induced by the increasing awareness of cultural differences should be systematically shown and explained to students. The poetics of textual (re)production is largely concerned with an evaluation of how the source culture’s point of view is represented. In dealing with what seems to be unbridgeable gaps between peoples and cultures, students are also expected to identify similarities between two cultures and explore the possible commonality to aim at and also provide a similar, albeit inevitably somewhat different, function in translation. The varied characteristics of students are displayed in various possible strategies for translating culturally specific texts, or elements of texts. They are constantly reminded to take into account the linguistic characteristics and distinctively cultural features of the original while formulating appropriate translation strategies.

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More pedagogical innovation in translation training should be developed to meet the exponentially growing demand for competent cultural translators. And increased emphasis should be placed on the interconnectedness between reading, writing and translating, and students will learn to combine translation with conscious practice in reading and writing so that they will not shy away from tackling cultural untranslatability. Through classroom discussion and practice, they are exposed to a variety of texts representing different translation challenges. There is, of course, the issue of cultural sensitivity. But cross-cultural attitude and willingness to open cultural mind underpin the whole practice of translating cross-culturally. Students must realize that to be competent translators, they need to increase their linguistic resourcefulness and transcultural competence to respond to practical challenges concerning cultural issues. From the point of view of programme designing and teaching effect, students’ learning needs should be identified and addressed to ensure that they are provided with adequate cultural knowledge and skills in choosing and constructing all diversities of translation strategies, should the need arise. In order to better meet the needs of translation training in mainland China, specially prepared course books combined with rigorous pedagogical studies have been written to improve the quality of translation training programmes, and there has been a wide range of discussions on how these course books should be designed to make sure that different types of content are incorporated. In this light, translation training is directed towards a more systematic and better-integrated approach to cultural and other aspects of translation. It can be said that tomorrow’s training efforts are prone to give precedence to the unquestioned primacy of cultural production in translation within an overall framework for developing cultural adaptability. Once again, we need to hammer home again that when performing the task of cultural translation, students must be more aware of the cultural dimension to translation activities. This should be the driving force behind the design of curriculum and establishment of training objectives.

References Bhugra, D., & Poole, N. (2011). Culture and mental health. In N. Agrawal, J. Bolton, & R. Gaind (Eds.), Current themes in psychiatry in theory and practice (pp. 3–17). London: Palgrave Macmillan. Catford, J. C. (1965). A linguistic theory of translation: An essay in applied linguistics. London: Oxford University Press. Chang, N.-F. (2005). Yes prime manipulator: How a Chinese translation of British political humour came into being. Hong Kong: Chinese University Press. Copeland, R. (1995). Rhetoric, hermeneutics, and translation in the middle ages: Academic traditions and vernacular texts. Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press. Grosman, M. (1994). Cross-cultural awareness: Focusing on otherness. In C. Dollerup, A. Lindegaard, & A. Lindegaard (Eds.), Teaching Translation and Interpreting 2: Insights, Aims, Visions: Papers from the Second Language International Conference, Elsinore, Denmark, 4–6 June 1993 (pp. 51–58). Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing.

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Howland, D. (2003). The predicament of ideas in culture: Translation and historiography. History and Theory, 42(1). Kaluzna, A. (2012). Teaching translation and interpreting at University of Zioelona Gora. In D. C. Kiraly, Ł. Bogucki, & M. Deckert (Eds.), Teaching translation and interpreting: Advances and perspectives. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Kiraly, D. C. (1995). Pathways to translation: Pedagogy and process. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press. Lefevere, A. (2002). Introduction. In A. Lefevere (Ed.), Translation/history/culture: A sourcebook. Abingdon, Oxon & New York: Routledge. Nord, C. (1992). Text analysis in translator training. In C. Dollerup & A. Loddegaard (Eds.), Teaching translation and interpreting: Training talent and experience (pp. 39–48). Amsterdam: Benjamins Publishing. Nord, C. (2005). Text analysis in translation: Theory, methodology, and didactic application of a model for translation-oriented text analysis. Amsterdam: Rodopi. Rubel, P., & Rosman, A. (Eds.). (2003). Introduction: Translation and anthropology. Oxford & New York: Berg. Venuti, L. (2013). Translation changes everything: Theory and practice. Abingdon, Oxon & New York: Routledge. Winkelman, M. (2008). Culture and health: Applying medical anthropology. Oxford: Wiley. Witte, H. (1996). Contrastive culture learning in translator training. In C. Dollerup & V. Appel (Eds.), Teaching Translation and Interpreting 3: New Horizons: Papers from the Third Language International Conference, Elsinore, Denmark, 9–11 June 1995 (pp. 73–80). Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing. Yengoyan, A. A. (2003). Lyotard and Wittgenstein and the question of translation. In P. G. Rubel & A. Rosman (Eds.), Translating cultures: Perspectives on translation and anthropology (pp. 25–43). Oxford & New York: Berg.

Yifeng Sun is Chair Professor of Translation Studies and Head of the Department of English at the University of Macau, and Honorary Professor at the University of Queensland. Previously he was Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Director of the Centre for Humanities Research at Lingnan University, Hong Kong. He served as Vice President of the International Association for Translation and Intercultural Studies. He is the author of Chinese-Western Translation Theories (forthcoming), Translating Foreign Otherness (2018), Cultural Translation (2016), Perspective, Interpretation and Culture (2nd edition, 2006), Cultural Exile and Homeward Journey (2005) and Fragmentation and Dramatic Moments (2002), and editor or co-editor of Translating Chinese Art and Modern Literature (2019), Translation and Academic Journals (2015) and Translation, Globalisation and Localisation (2008).

Translation Teaching Research in the Chinese Mainland (1978–2018): Theory, Method and Development Youlan Tao, Hui Wen, and Shuhuai Wang

Abstract Since the institutional translation teaching began in 1978, we can notice that translation teaching in the Chinese Mainland has undergone five distinctive stages: intuition-guided, contrast-oriented, equivalence-oriented, function-oriented and cognition-oriented. In each stage, distinct teaching approaches have been applied according to the specific teaching objectives, teaching materials, assessments and the demands of students as well as the qualities of teachers, and the teaching approaches evolved from the earlier personal experience and reflection-based teaching to the structural approach, the constructive approach and the holistic approach, crystallizing the teaching philosophy from experientialism, structuralism to constructivism and holism. In line with translation teaching practice, translation teaching researches have also developed and displayed the following features in terms of research methods: experience-based elicitation, dialectics-based deduction, experiment-based induction, interdisciplinary integration. In view of the development of translation studies and the variety of translation practice, this chapter surveys some major streams of research on translation teaching in China, providing critical comments on the previous research and outlining some future trends for translation teaching research in China. Translation teaching research informs the training of all-round translators and interpreters as well as contributes to the growth of translation studies as a discipline.

This paper is supported by the Funding of The Ministry of Education 2017 with the Number of 17YJA740048. Y. Tao Department of Translation and Interpreting, College of Foreign Languages and Literatures, Fudan University in Shanghai, Shanghai, China H. Wen (B) School of International Studies, Shaanxi Normal University, Xi’an, 710062 Shaanxi, China e-mail: [email protected] S. Wang School of Foreign Languages, Huazhong University of Science and Technology in Wuhan, Wuhan, China © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 L. Lim and D. Li (eds.), Key Issues in Translation Studies in China, New Frontiers in Translation Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-5865-8_3

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Keywords Translation teaching · Translation teaching practice · Translation teaching researches · Research methods · Translator competence

1 Introduction Translation teaching plays a central role in cultivating qualified translators and interpreters, and it presents an important area of translation studies. In the Chinese Mainland, translation teaching mainly targets three groups of students at tertiary institutions: non-English/translation majors, English majors and translation majors. For the first type of students, translation was mainly taught as a language skill in College English Teaching Center helping students to improve their English. For English majors, translation was mostly taught as a course, usually entitled translation theory and practice, in the schools and colleges of foreign languages and literature or international studies universities. And for translation majors, translation was largely taught as a professional skill in a systematic translation pedagogical framework from Bachelor of Translation and Interpreting (BTI) to Master of Translation and Interpreting (MTI) and Ph.D. In the past 40 years, translation teaching has undergone five distinctive stages: intuition-dominated, contrast-oriented, equivalence-oriented, functionoriented and cognition-oriented. In each stage, different teaching approaches have been applied due to different teaching objectives, teaching materials, teaching assessment and the demands of students as well as the qualities of teachers, i.e. the earliest teaching by personal experience and reflection → teaching by structural approach → teaching by constructive approach → teaching by holistic approach. In reference to the translation teaching practice over the years, this chapter reviews previous research in translation teaching in the Chinese Mainland, makes critical comments and provides suggestions for future studies.

2 Previous Research on Translation Teaching Over the past years of translation studies, we find that researches on translation teaching have been enriched either in terms of research content or in terms of research methods. In particular, research methods have become more scientific and diversified. Before 2002, researches are more experiential and reflective, with comparative and contrastive methods often applied. In the new century, some scholars began to do experiments in the teaching contexts and gather relevant data for analysis. There emerged more empirical and interdisciplinary studies in the field of translation teaching and training. The detailed analysis of these researches is presented as follows.

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2.1 Overview Since translation teaching was not emphasized in the field of foreign language pedagogy until the 1980s, there have been few papers discussing translation teaching in periodicals and journals of foreign languages and literature. Although Chinese Translators Journal, the only prestigious journal in translation studies in the Chinese Mainland, has one special column on translation teaching, there were only 18 articles on translation teaching published from 1980 to 2000. However, the number of published articles has increased rapidly since 2000, according to the survey on CNKI with “translation teaching” and “interpretation teaching” as separate keywords in the article titles (see Tables 1 and 2). A survey with “translation teaching” as a keyword of the book titles in Duxiu Database shows that there are 163 books published (see Table 1). It is noteworthy that there are 14 research monographs on translation and interpreting teaching (see Table 3). There have also been three volumes of teaching conference proceedings (Liu 2001; Liu et al. 2001; Tu and Xin 2014) and two personal collections of academic papers (Li 2012; Liu 2017). As for large-scale academic conferences, there are 12 national interpretation conferences, 15 national undergraduate teaching conferences, 11 national MTI teaching annual Table 1 Number of publications and projects on translation teaching (1978–2018) 1978–1989

1990–1999

2001–2009

2010–2018

Total

Number of articles published in 58 all journals

284

3672

5633

9637

Number of articles published in 29 key journalsa

79

255

471

834

Number of books on translation 0 teaching

3

26

134

163

Number of national projects on translation teaching

1

8

10

19

0

a The scope of the key academic journals in the Chinese Mainland includes the overview of Chinese

core journals compiled by Peking University Library and the citation index of Chinese social science compiled by Nanjing University, as well as SCI, EI and SSCI index journals. Here, the key journals mainly refer to the thirteen journals listed as the category of H3/H9 foreign languages in the catalog

Table 2 Number of publications and projects on interpretation teaching (1978–2018) 1949–1989

1990–1999

2000–2018

Total

Number of articles on interpretation teaching published in key journals

25

71

395

491

Number of books on interpretation teaching

4

18

92

114

Number of national projects on interpretation teaching

0

0

2

2

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Table 3 Monographs on translation and interpreting teaching in Chinese Mainland (1978–2018) No.

Author

Title

Publication date

Publisher

1

Mu, Lei

Translation teaching in China

1999

Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press

2

Zhang, Meifang

English/Chinese translation 2001 textbooks in China (1949–1998)

Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press

3

Liu, Miqing Translation teaching: theory and practice

2003

China Translation and Publishing Corporation

4

Wen, Jun

2005

Chinese Literature and History Press

5

Liu, Heping Interpretation theories and teaching

2005

China Translation and Publishing Corporation

6

Yang, Chengshu

Interpretation teaching studies: theory and practice

2005

China Translation and Publishing Corporation

7

Miao, Ju

Translation teaching and the development of translation competence

2006

Tian Jin People’s Press

8

Cai, Xiaohong

Interpretation and evaluation

2007

China Translation and Publishing Corporation

9

Tao, Youlan Translation textbooks in China: 2008 a theoretical reconsideration of their making (in English)

Fudan University Press

10

Bo, Zhenjie A Study on translation teaching 2011 for English Majors at Chinese tertiary institutions

Shandong Publishing House

11

Tao, Youlan Translation textbooks making for translation majors in China: theories and strategies (in Chinese)

2013

Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press

12

Wang, Shuhuai

2013

Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press

13

Li, Qingyun A study on translation teaching methodology

2015

Harbin Engineering University Press

14

Peng, Ping

2015

Central Compilation and Translation Press

Translation curriculum mode: translation-competence-based

On translation teaching

A study on translation teaching for translation undergraduates

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Fig. 1 Positioning of translation teaching research in Holmes’ map of translation studies

conferences and 5 national doctoral forums on translation studies with translation and interpretation teaching as a key part. In terms of journal articles, Gu and Shao (2015) have presented a quantitative review of 687 articles on the topic of translation teaching research from 20 key journals during the period from 1978 to 2013, categorizing 11 topics under the theme of translation teaching like “teaching model and methodology,” “translation test and assessment,” “research on translation textbooks,” “translation teaching and translation development as a discipline,” “review of translation teaching,” “translation teaching and translation talent cultivation,” “teaching syllabus and curriculum design,” “introduction to translation programs abroad,” “translation technology and translation teaching,” “corpus and translation teaching,” “translation teacher development.” It indicates that translation teaching has been well studied on a wide range of topics. Although translation teaching has been studied from different perspectives, it needs to be located in the Holmes’ Map of Translation Studies as a branch of applied theory. As Tao (2005a, b) has revised the following map, translation teaching includes five aspects: translator training, textbook compilation, teaching methodology, testing engineering and curriculum design. Now, we will focus on these five aspects and elaborate them in the following sections (Fig. 1).

2.2 Translator Training Studies Over the last 40 years, China has witnessed two stages of translation booms: 1978– 2010 and 2011 up to now (Huang 2017, 2018a, b) with the upgrading of translation

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services to language services, which have created a great demand for translators and interpreters. In China, most of the translators and interpreters have been provided through higher education, and therefore, “translator training” mainly refers to “translator education” or “academic training of translation students.” So here in this chapter, we use the term “translator training” in its broad sense. We conducted a survey on CNKI, queried the keywords “translation training”/“interpreting training,” “translator training”/“interpreter training” and “translation teachers’ training”/“translation technique training” and “translation education/training of translation talents” as the precise subject in the search engine, and retrieved 153 articles, although only 47 were published in key journals. By the end of 2018, there had been one book published and no projects in this area. From 1970 to 1999, as the prelude to the rise of translator training studies, there were only 6 articles, which discuss how to train interpreters and comment on books on training translators and interpreters (Mu 1999). From 2000 to 2009, there was a notable increase to a total number of 64 articles, books and projects. The research on translation training made a shift from examining specialized development of translators and interpreters (Liu 2007a, b) to the professionalized development (Liu 2003; Han 2004; Wang 2009; Pan et al. 2009). Translation scholars mainly focused their efforts on four aspects: (1) competence training (Wang 2001); (2) the mode, principles and strategies of training (Zhang 2004; Huang 2005; Wang 2008; Liu 2009); (3) improvement of training quality and evaluation (Wang 2001, 2003a, b, 2007a, b; Feng 2005; Cai 2005; Gu 2008; Liu and Zhang 2009); and (4) the training of teaching staff (Ren 2009; Tao 2007; He 2007, 2009; Bao 2009; Hu 2009). In addition, they reviewed the past and the status quo, anticipated future prospects (Ren 2004; Wang 2007a, b; Yan and Dong 2005), borrowed overseas training experience (Ren 2005; Huang 2005; Yang 2006; Wang 2008; Gao and Chai 2007) and offered solutions of improving students’ cognition and knowledge reserve through full preparation and through compiling and using different corpora for specific translation purposes (Liu 2008; Yang 2007). From 2010 to 2018, there were 13 articles published in key journals. Fang (2012) discussed the concept of professionalized translation, its process and problems. Other papers explored the training of specialized trainees such as medical interpreters, business interpreters, Russian–Chinese translators, court interpreters and tourist translators and interpreters and the introduction to or reviews of books on translator training studies. Apart from papers and projects, only one book that studies on translator training was published, entitled The Research on the Relationship between the Culture of Liaoning and the Training for Translation Students. It is a field study on the training of translation learners in terms of the regional culture of Liaoning, a province in the north of China. Looking back to the development of translator training practice and the studies in this respect, we can observe two features: First, translator training became professionalized in the Chinese Mainland in 2003, with Translation Services Committee established as the 9th division of TAC (Translators Association of China) and also

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CATTI1 (China Accreditation Test for Translators and Interpreters) launched (Fang 2012) by the Ministry of Personnel of the People’s Republic of China. CATTI is the most authoritative translation and interpretation accreditation test, which is implemented throughout the country according to the uniformed standards and in compliance with the national system of professional qualification certificates. By the second half of 2013, 43 translation and interpretation tests, including English simultaneous interpretation tests at Levels 1, 2 and 3 in seven languages (English, French, Japanese, Russian, German, Spanish and Arabic), were held across the country. Second, studies before 2003 showed great concern about the specialization of translator training, in which Chinese scholars have tried to set up translator training as a special type independent from language learning, while studies after 2003 are more about the professionalization of translator training in a broad sense. As one important step toward the professionalization of translators and interpreters, China’s translator accreditation tests (including CATTI) have drawn scholars’ attention from the very beginning. There were 17 out of 47 articles on translator training studied CATTI and other tests. The most studied areas are: CATTI and translator training; CATTI and professionalization (Liu 2007); the validity and reliability of the test (Zhao et al. 2007; Lu et al. 2007); CATTI, SIA (Shanghai Interpretation Accreditation) and the training and improvement of translator’s competence (Wang 2007a, b); and the preparation for the tests. Translator training in the Chinese Mainland is becoming more prosperous as more social and industrial organizations have joined in the tasks of training qualified translators and interpreters. As long as the training sector has become diversified, the relevant studies will grow more in depth and breadth in the future. They will be complementary to the studies of cultivating translation students through institutional education in the universities and colleges.

2.3 Textbook Compilation Studies Translation textbooks constitute a crucial element of translation studies in the Chinese context, which is worthy of much attention because “they provide societal perspectives on Translation Studies: textbooks can be used to trace not only developments in Translation Studies, but also political and societal changes in China” (Tao 2005a, b). According to an incomplete survey, more than 1000 translation textbooks have been published in the Chinese Mainland during five stages: the initial stage (before 1978), development stage (1980–1989), flourishing stage (1990–1999), multi-directional stage (2000–2005) and professionalized stage (2006–) (Tao 2013a, b). However, in the scholarly circle in China, translation textbook studies had been much ignored and began to receive attention only in recent years. There were only 2 academic papers on translation textbooks in the whole country from 1949 to 1994. 1 More information is available on the Web site: http://tac-online.org.cn/en/tran/2009-10/09/con tent_3174954.htm.

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Table 4 Studies on translation and interpretation textbooks (1978–2018) Monograph

Academic papers

Thesis

Project

Studies on translation textbooks

4 (Zhang 2001; Tao 2008; Tao 2013; Zeng 2013)

157 (49 published in key journals)

13 master theses 1 doctoral thesis

2 national 1 provincial

Studies on interpretation textbooks

0

54 (13 published in key journals)

12 master theses

2 national

From 1995 to 2005, the number rose to 22. From 2006 to 2018, there were 13 masters’ theses and 1 doctoral thesis on the topic of translation textbooks. Four monographs and 244 papers were published, and two academic national translation projects about textbooks were granted funding, which clearly shows that translation textbook studies are gaining scholars’ attention. In terms of studies on interpretation textbooks, there have been 54 papers since 1999, of which only 13 were published in prestigious journals. Since 2006, 12 masters’ theses discuss the compilation and evaluation of interpretation textbooks from various perspectives (see Table 4). Such studies are few compared to the total number of textbooks published. But there are still some scholars who have shown their concerns on this topic and made worthy attempts. From the 1980s onward, Chau Siu Cheung (Simon) at Hong Kong Baptist University has been conducting a comparative study on the adaptations and compilation of translation textbooks as well as on translation works in the Mainland, Hong Kong and Taiwan. Chau and Zhang (2001) proposed a macroscopic categorization and made a comparison between the existing translation textbooks in China, illustrating the merits and demerits with some specific examples and figures. Her research work resulted in a book titled English/Chinese Translation Textbooks in China (1949–1998), which is considered the first book in China to study translation textbooks in a systematic way. The topic of designing translation textbooks is also discussed in the book Research of Translation Teaching in China, published in 1999, written by Mu Lei. This same topic is explored from different angles by the translation scholars such as Luo Jinde, Luo Xuanmin, Xu Jun, Guo Zhuzhang, Tu Guoyuan, Fang Ping, Fang Mengzhi, Feng Qinhua, Huang Zhonglian, He Gangqiang, Mei Deming, Wang Dawei, Wen Jun and Wang Shuhuai.2 In addition, Liu’s (2001) paper is notable, which calls for the establishment of a new system of Chinese translation textbooks by comparing traditional Chinese translation textbooks with those published in English-speaking countries. It is suggested that more attention be given to the design of Chinese–English textbooks in the new era. Other relevant studies carried out by researchers such as Lei (1995), Ju (2001), Qu (2003) and Wang (2004a, b) provide useful guidelines for the making of translation textbooks in China. In the new era, there is a growing demand for more systematically designed, 2 Their

opinions are all cited in the book: Tao (2013). On the Making of Translation Textbooks for Translation Majors in China: Theoretical Construction and Suggested Solutions. Shanghai: Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press.

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theory-informed translation textbooks, which implement more effective approaches for translator training. The research papers in this area mainly focus on four aspects: (1) theoretical constructs, (2) compiling principles and strategies, (3) integrating translation technology into textbooks and (4) review and comment on translation textbooks. First, translation scholars have applied theories to guide the making of translation and interpreting textbooks, such as textual typology theory (Gao 2010), functionalist theory (Wang 2004a, b), textual analysis theory (Guo and Cai 2006), cognitive theory (Tao and Huang 2005), skopos theory (Tao 2006), resilient theory3 (Wu 2010) and eco-translatological theory (Tao 2013a, b). Second, in terms of compiling principles and strategies, the majority of the papers explore how to make a good textbook, such as effective compiling principles for making Chinese–English textbooks (Wang 2008), market-oriented compiling techniques of textbooks, the compilation, publication and development of interpreting textbooks (Wu 2012), the guiding principles for making interpreting textbooks (Feng 1999), the characteristics of interpretation textbook and its compilation (Fang 2002). Third, translation technology is particularly useful for compiling textbooks. Textbooks need well-selected materials, as noted by Liu, “we may collect the data by corpus search so that it can guide us to design the syllabus and select appropriate materials for the textbook” (Liu 2007a, b). Tao (2008) proposed a dynamic e-textbook to be used on teaching platforms that should be developed. Xu (2008) analyzed the corpus-based English translation textbooks and translation teaching, and Tao (2010) developed a framework for producing corpus-based interpretation textbooks. The fourth sub-area pertains to the review and comments on translation textbooks, in which the authors draw on their own teaching experience of using the textbooks and make critical comments or give practical suggestions for the revision of the textbooks (Han 2004; Wang 2004a, b; Liu et al. 2011). Over the past 10 years, “studies on translation textbooks and research perspectives have reflected a shift from the previous random comments on textbooks to empirical evaluation and the development of theoretical constructs” (Tao 2016). After Zhang Meifang’s first monograph on translation textbooks, there published two more monographs: One is a publication of the dissertation by Tao Youlan, entitled A Theoretical Reconsideration of the Making of Translation Textbooks in China (2008). It is the first systematic research of developing translation textbooks, advancing a new framework that includes needs analysis, approaches, principles and techniques of integrating the components of a translation textbook, with a view to making a more qualified translation textbook for more efficient teaching of translation in China. Another one is the output of a national project by Tao Youlan, entitled On the Making of Translation Textbooks for Translation Majors in China: Theoretical Construction and Suggested Solutions (2013). It provides theoretical support and strategic guidance 3 The

original concept is “变译理论 (bianyi lilun)”, put forward by Professor Huang Zhonglian, referring to the fact that the translated version has to be adapted to the demands of the client, adjusting somewhat from the original version. It has been translated into “resilient theory” by Professor He Gangqiang from Fudan University.

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for the cultivation of translation majors by discussing the history and status of translation textbook compilation, its theoretical framework and needs analysis and offers detailed suggestions for making effective multi-model textbooks in the digital age. With the flood of translation textbooks coming into the market, the study of translation textbooks is becoming more necessary and urgent. In modern times, translation textbooks are increasingly able to meet new challenges and “their content and models are influenced by many factors such as social politics, economy, foreign policies, teaching syllabi, teaching methods, students’ level and theoretical achievements in translation” (Tao 2013a, b). Therefore, the textbooks should be userfriendly, humanity-oriented and multi-directional, and translation textbook compilation should be analyzed in a larger social context, enlarging the scope of application and enriching the content of translation studies.

2.4 Teaching Methodology Studies According to Wang (2013a, b), translation teaching methodology is the arrangement and integration of teaching stages, steps and modes with certain teaching philosophy relying on the modern educational techniques and media or the systematical selection and arrangement of teaching contents under certain linguistic or cultural theory, in order to help the students make optimal cognitive and behavioral changes in the field of translation process and translation results. This definition suggests that a methodology may distinguish itself from another in one or several of the five dimensions: subject and object, cognition and behavior, process, results and evaluations, theories and tools. Therefore, in this section, we classify the translation teaching methodologies used in the Chinese Mainland over the past 40 years into six categories: the subjectfocused, cognition- or behavior-focused, theory-application-based, process-, result-, evaluation-focused, tool and technique-based and synthesized methods. The findings presented in this section are based on our query of the keywords “translation teaching mode” or “translation teaching strategies” or “translation classroom teaching method” in precise subject on CNKI, resulting in 475 articles in which 51 are published in key journals, 13 books and 7 research projects. There were only 3 articles from 1978 to 1999; from 2000 to 2009, there were 17 articles, 3 books and 2 projects; from 2010 to 2018, there were 31 articles, 10 books and 5 projects (see Table 5). Of the seven projects on translation teaching methodology, two examine teaching modes in general (Wang 2008; He 2009), one combines teaching mode studies with the construction of translation corpus, one empirical study investigates instructional strategies for conference interpreting teaching (Wang 2011a, b), one examines the integrated mode for translation teaching, and finally two projects study the modes for teaching Japanese translation and interpreting. In terms of journal articles, the first paper was concerned about translation teaching methods (Wang 1991). Several subsequent papers (Zhu 2008; Lian et al. 2011; Liu

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Table 5 Studies on translation teaching methodology 1978–1989

1990–1999

2000–2009

2010–2018

Total

Number of articles published in key journals

0

3

17

31

51

Number of books on translation methodology studies

0

0

3

10

13

Number of national projects on translation methodology studies

0

0

2

5

7

2013) discussed the main issues in translation teaching methodology, such as its importance, the status quo at home and abroad and the confusing terminology. The other papers explored translation teaching methodology in six aspects: (1) Process-focused methods: Apart from the traditional five-step teaching method summarized by Wang (2001), the four-step critical method advocated by Liu (1996) was a revised version of the earliest methodology practiced from 1978, which encouraged group discussion about the individual versions before working out a group version and receiving the teacher’s comments and sample translations. Other variations include the three styles of teaching presented by Lei and Lu (2001), and the comparison method proposed by Wei (2004). All these researchers attempted to optimize classroom procedures with emphasis on students’ involvement. In the task-based orientation, we found task-based translation teaching proposed by Zhu (2004), translation workshop method by Jin (2000) which was further modified by Liang (2006), the portfolio approach introduced by Tong (2008) and Wang (2013a, b), which drew on Colina’s and Johnson’s models, the method of writing translators’ notes adopted by Li (2006) in his due process teaching, the assessment-oriented method by Hu (2009), and the integrated assessment model by Hu and Wang (2018), which put more emphasis on the learning process and competence training. (2) Learner-focused methods: Wang (2003a, b) appealed to learner-centered translation teaching mode, advocating a shift of the concern from “what to teach” to “how to teach” and from the teacher-centered to learner-centered classroom teaching. Several researchers furthered this line of study in all levels from the junior college to MTI translation teaching (Wang and He 2008; Hu 2010). Another group of researchers focused on the cooperation and networking of the students in and out of the classroom by adopting jigsaw method, QQ, emails and other social networks (Wu 2007; Wang 2011a, b; Dai 2011; Wen 2015; Yu 2018). (3) Cognition- or behavior-focused methods: Cognition- or behavior-oriented methods center on developing students’ intelligence in translation teaching. Various forms of teaching methods have been proposed, such as a guided inquiry teaching mode (Liu 2007a, b), empirical study of the translation process and strategies, and research-oriented translation teaching mode (Guo 2016). All

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these studies foster students’ ability to respond thoughtfully and develop their independent learning competence. (4) Theory-application-based methods: Lin (2000) observed that along with the development of linguistics, literature and other related subjects, translation teaching methodology of the modern times had its own emphasis in each historical period with some of which focusing on pragmatics and stylistics, some on social linguistics, some on hermeneutics, etc. The theory-applicationbased methods in the Chinese Mainland include rhetoric-centered teaching proposed by Wu (1993), the contrastive teaching method of the English and Chinese language, social semiotics translation teaching method by Chen (2002), discourse translation method by Li (2003), functionalist translation teaching method by Tao (2010), constructionist teaching method by Chen (2005), the translation teaching mode based on framework theory by Ding (2013a, b) and the eco-translatological translation teaching mode by Shu (2014). (5) Tool- and technique-based methods: The major types of this category consist of corpus-based translation teaching method (Wang 2004a, b; Qin and Wang 2007; Xiong 2015); computer-aided translation teaching method; and socialnetwork-based translation teaching method. The application of (IT) tools and techniques provided teachers and students with immense authentic materials, exhibiting great potential to improve teaching and learning efficiency, enlarging classroom capacity and expanding learning time and space. (6) Synthesized methods: This category is best showcased by research on flipped classroom. Flipped classroom has been studied in the context of practical translation courses, such as courses on English and Chinese translation skills, interpretation, MTI translation techniques and that of translation theory courses (Jiang and Tao 2018). There were also advanced flipped classroom modes, together with other modes of teaching and learning such as workshop (Jia 2015), SPOC (Jiang and Tao 2017), project (Dong et al. 2017), cognitive method (Gao 2018) and so on. In general, translation methodology studies in the Chinese Mainland are diverse and comprehensive, ranging from studies on traditional teaching methods to studies on the newest flipped classroom modes. As translation methodology studies form the core of translation teaching studies, we argue for the importance of developing interdisciplinary studies and harvesting from cross-fertilization so as to attain more effective teaching methods for better translation teaching and learning outcome.

2.5 Curriculum Designing Studies Translation and interpreting curriculum has been gradually developed over the past 40 years in the Chinese Mainland, and it can be roughly divided into four types: (1) language-based curriculum; (2) skill-based curriculum; (3) translation-competencebased curriculum; and (4) translator-competence-based curriculum. The historical

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development of translation and interpreting curriculum indicates that curriculum is growing more mature and systematic in line with the development of translation studies and translation teaching, also reflecting a shift of teaching philosophy from behaviorism to constructivism and humanism (Tao 2019). Very few books have been published to explore translation curricula except two monographs on curriculum design: One is written by Wen (2005), entitled Translation Curriculum Mode: Translation-competence-based, focusing on how to build translation-competence-based translation curriculum for English majors. The other is New Teaching Philosophy of German Translation: The Design and Implementation of Translation Curriculum, compiled by Wang Jingping in 2005, discussing translation theories, translation teaching, translation methodology, the macro-designing of translation courses, the micro-designing of translation courses. The studies provide a systematic investigation on English and German translation curriculum designing. Scholars like Zhong Weihe, Mu Lei, Liu Heping, Wen Jun, Li Defeng, Zhuang Zhixiang and Xu Jun have published important papers in this respect. According to CNKI, there are 135 academic papers on translation curriculum published during 1995–2018 and 57 papers on interpretation curriculum (see Table 6). These studies mainly investigate translation curriculum in three pedagogical situations: (a) translation and interpretation as one course in English teaching curriculum or interpreting teaching curriculum (Liu and Xiong 2011), (b) translation and interpreting teaching curriculum at the BTI level (Wang 2017; He and Zeng 2013; Wang 2009) and (c) translation and interpreting curriculum at the MTI and MA level (Zhang 2013; Zhong 2007; Yang and Gong 2011). Results of these studies can be summarized into four major categories: (1) to introduce the curricula in the European Union, Canada, the USA, South Korea, Australia, Taiwan and Hong Kong (Gao and Chai 2007); to compare and analyze curricula at home and abroad; (2) to describe a separate translation or interpretation course or reveal the current problems of BTI and MTI curricula; (3) to make suggestion for reforming the curriculum of BTI and MTI programs. As suggested by Zhang and Wen (2005), “Curriculum designing should be student-centered, focusing on improving students’ translator competence. The content selection, course implementation and assessment should be made to cultivate students’ practical ability, which is the inevitable trend in the new century” (Zhang and Wen 2005). Only when the curriculum is to the taste of learners will they learn hard with good effect. The market’s demand can tell students what to learn and how to acquire necessary skills Table 6 Studies on translation and interpretation curriculum design (1995–2018) Monograph

Academic papers

Thesis

Project

Studies on translation curriculum

2 (Wang 2005; Wen 2005)

135 (14 published in key journals)

10 master theses 1 doctoral thesis

0

Studies on interpretation curriculum

0

57 (5 published in key 11 master theses journals)

0

60

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and knowledge by certain courses, so “we need to take learners’ need and market’s demand into consideration when designing the translation and interpreting curriculum” (Li and Hu 2006); (4) to offer a theoretical framework and predict the future trends in curriculum designing. Wu (2006) proposed a theoretical framework for translation curriculum design which comprises two parts: the conceptual grounding (including relevant principles of educational–cultural philosophy and basic assumptions about the nature of translation and of translation pedagogy), and the structural components (consisting of contents, process/means and outcomes). Guided by this framework, translation and interpreting curriculum in the Chinese Mainland have developed rapidly from “its humble past as a component of foreign language classrooms” (Xu 2005) to a wide range of courses especially at the BTI, MTI or MA levels. Students are different individuals with unique demands and learning habits, so personalized or customized translation and interpreting curriculum will be developed in the near future to cater to the taste of learners. In particular, designing taskbased, authentic and effective translation and interpreting activities will be most challenging. Although these studies are of great academic value, a closer examination of them reveals that there are still limitations and drawbacks. Some papers just give brief historical reviews of the entire translation curricula or offer a short summary of the reform proposal without an in-depth exploration of the reasons behind the problems. Other papers describe the problems very superficially, and the suggestions are not feasible in practice, incapable of coordinating the conflicts among students’ needs, curriculum and markets’ demand. Therefore, the relevant research on curriculum should be more systematic and interactive, changing from focusing on teaching skills to the combination of teaching skills with course designing, “integrating foreign language teaching achievements and translation studies achievements into the development and making of translation and interpreting curriculum” (Wen 2005).

2.6 Testing Engineering Studies Translation testing is an important organic component of translation teaching yet the most neglected one. Research on translation testing is comparatively weak in the Chinese Mainland in three ways: late start, dearth of research and a narrow field of vision. Our survey on CNKI by querying keywords such as “translation testing”/“translation examination” or “interpreting testing”/“interpreting examination” as the precise subject in the search engine returned 884 articles, among which only 80 were published in key journals. By the end of 2018, there had been 14 books published and 5 projects carried out in this area (see Table 7). Table 7 shows a trend of continuous growth in the past 40 years. The first paper on translation testing was published in 1986, and there were a very small number of publications before 2000. For instance, during the first stage (1986–2001), only 13

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Table 7 Publications and projects on translation/interpreting testing 1990–1999

2000–2009

2010–2018

Total

Number of articles published in 1 all journals

1978–1989

16

241

626

884

Number of articles published in 1 key journals

9

28

42

80

Number of books on translation/interpreting testing

0

0

6

8

14

Number of national projects on translation/interpreting testing

0

0

3

2

5

articles in key journals have been published, among which 2 introduced the administration of the examinations in history, 4 discussed the scope, content, methods and principles of translation testing, 4 discussed testing- and teaching-related issues, and the other 3 were concerned with the status quo and prospect (Song 1997; Xu 1998). There were no studies in interpretation testing or testing technology during this period. There were no books or projects either. The second stage (2002–2009) marked the translation testing studies in the real sense with systematic methodology and epistemology. It has been categorized into three branches: written translation testing, interpretation testing and human– computer interaction testing. Each branch has been granted with one research project supported by the NSSFC (National Social Science Fund of China) (Wang 2009). This stage witnessed 26 articles in the key journals, and 6 books were published. Papers in this stage could be roughly classified as the follows: theoretical framework construction (Chen 2002; Feng 2005; Mu 2006a, b, c, 2007), test designing and grading (Chen 2003), evaluation of specific examination (Wang 2009), reflections on examinations and translation testing studies and translation teaching (Liu 2009; Bao 2009), status quo analysis, review and prospect, and reference and inspiration on overseas studies (Chen 2002). They have demonstrated four typical characteristics: 1. Interpretation testing studies examined methodological issues from its debut in 2002, as Chen (2002, 2003) suggested, interpreting tests could follow Bachman’s theory of communicative language testing to test the interpreting competence in three aspects: knowledge, skill and psychophysiology competences. Feng (2005) also advocated the importance of scientific methodology in interpreting testing research. 2. Disciplinary researches have started since 2006 as Mu (2006a, b, c, 2007) in her serial articles on Chinese–English translation discussed the basic theoretical issues such as the definition and positioning of translation tests, the translation criticism and translation criteria, the translation ability and translation testing, translation testing and grading. Three modes of computer–human interactive grading were explored since 2008. Scholars worked in three dimensions: computer-aided machine grading; machine-aided grading; and automatic

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grading. Tian (2008) introduced a pilot self-developed online automated assessment system of English–Chinese translation based on manual annotations. Wen Qiufang and others presented other approaches of machine natural language processing system for online grading using bilingual alignment technology, human-aided automatic assessment of translation tests and automatic detection of similar answers (Wen et al. 2009; Wang and Chang 2009). 3. Monographs on translation testing modes or assessment modes were published since 2005 (Si 2005; Hou 2005), which indicated the systematic study in this area. The third stage (2010–2018) saw continuously deepening research on the related topics by some representative scholars. The most productive authors were: Xiao with 5 articles and 1 book published as a result of her project (Xiao 2012). Other scholars were Jiang and Wen (2010, 2012), Wang and Yang (2010a, b), Zhang and Liu (2011, 2013), and Yang (2015). Researches during the third stage were analyzed to reveal the following features: (1) further consideration of the relationship between the internal texture and multi-disciplinary integration in terms of the theoretical macroscopic framework (Yang 2015; Yang and Mu 2016); (2) more focus on quantitative research and model construction at the operational level (Jiang and Wen 2010, 2012; Wang 2013a, b); (3) greater attention to the validity and reliability research when reflecting on the examinations (Yan and Lv 2018); (4) more attention to the factor of grader in the study of grading system (Jiang et al. 2011; Xiao 2012); (5) more empirical studies that illustrate the effect of the testing on translation teaching and theoretical research (Zhang and Liu 2013); and (6) more efforts on the status analysis, review, reflection, reference and outlook (Zhang and Liu 2011; Zhou and He 2013; Wang 2017; Ning 2018). The past 40 years in translation testing studies have witnessed studies on the above three branches as Chinese scholars dedicated more efforts to the grading system, the relationship between testing and teaching, and the relationship between testing and a few specific areas in theoretical researches. As translation testing enjoyed its uniqueness in terms of research objectives, scope, approaches and methodologies due to its interdisciplinary nature (Yang and Mu 2016), continued research initiatives will be worthwhile. Translation teaching has a history of about 100 years in the Chinese Mainland, and the research on translation teaching in a real sense started in the 1980s. We have reviewed the past years’ achievements in terms of studies in the five aspects—translator training, textbook compilation, teaching methodology, curriculum designing and testing engineering. One of the biggest achievements lies in that we have established a comprehensive system of educating translators and interpreters, so that its relevant studies have become more professional and systematic.

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3 Critical Comments and Some Future Trends for Translation Teaching Researches Since a whole system of translation pedagogy has been established, from professional certification schemes such as CATTI (China Accreditation Test for Translators and Interpreters), to translation as a minor program, translation B.A. programs, M.A. programs, MTI programs and also doctoral programs, it is necessary to facilitate more relevant studies in the following areas.

3.1 Broadening the Scope of Research on Learners at Different Levels In the Chinese Mainland, M.A. programs in translation studies (mainly between English and Chinese) were established at an early period, so a lot of studies focus on how to teach and what to teach at the master’s level. From 2006 onward, translation B.A. programs and MTI programs have been rapidly developed. An increasing number of papers and monographs have been focusing on the training of students in a formal degree program at either undergraduate or postgraduate level to enter the translation and interpreting profession. However, there are few studies that take the preprofessional interpreters and translators, translation minor and non-degree trainees into consideration. These three groups of learners have particular competences and potentials as well as a place in the job market, and the ways of educating them are different from the formal degree training. Relevant researches on them will provide more insights into translation pedagogy or the new effective models of training and teaching. In addition, doctoral students have become the research subjects in recent papers (Guo 2016; Sang 2017), which have introduced, analyzed and summarized relevant studies. This is an area that calls for more in-depth investigations.

3.2 Exploring Innovative Translation Teaching Theories Translation is basically a “know-how” discipline, which requires operative knowledge that is acquired mainly through practice. In translation and interpreting teaching, practice usually dominates the class. Accordingly, more researches are related to translation practice and teaching practice. Theoretically, there are some micro-level and meso-level researches in terms of translation teaching strategies, principles, methods and curriculum designing. At the macro-level, there are some interdisciplinary researches, i.e., applying theories of other disciplines into translation and interpreting teaching, such as the theory of translation memes, the theory of structuralism, the Gestalt theory, constructivism (Chen 2005; Wang 2013a, b, 2017), the theory of holism (Tan 2008), reception theory, the theory of eco-translatology,

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functionalism and skopostheorie (Tao 2010), cognitive theory and framework theory (Ding 2013a, b). Such approaches have been adopted to guide and offer suggestions for translation and interpreting teaching. The studies are mostly case studies and have not been deeply applied and widely accepted. It calls for more systematic and innovative studies that bring in philosophical insights. It has been proposed that “it is necessary to strengthen the study by building a system of translation teaching theories” (Zhong 2018).

3.3 Deepening Empirical Research Methodology According to Liu and Mu (2013: 105–109), teaching researches in China have made progress in terms of research methods both in width and in depth. However, quantitative and empirical research is small in number and less desirable in quality, while research methods in some research areas are relatively simple and less rigorous. It has been proposed that “translation teaching research should adopt more diversified and effective research methods by borrowing more scientific methods from sociology, education (e.g., action research, qualitative analysis methods), psychology and linguistics (e.g., methods for observation and experiments in empirical studies)”. In recent years, there is a considerable number of empirical studies reported in papers (Shu 2014) and dissertations (Lv 2018). However, there is still much room to deepen the empirical research on a wider range of research topics such as translation teacher training and development, translation students’ learning strategies and principles, and translation technology teaching. Since translation teaching is interactive and problem-based, future teaching studies can use the method of Action Research (AR) to investigate translation and interpreting teaching process. Action Research can play an important role in translation studies, bringing together academics, practitioners and receivers/clients. Researchers need to learn how to observe–reflect–plan–act– evaluate–modify in ever repeated cycles. Researchers believe that “the use of AR in translator education and training programs can contribute towards a future generation of committed reflective professionals. In our view, this will mean a long term investment that may lead to greater insight into long standing problems in TS” (Creco and Neves 2007).

3.4 Pay More Attention to Research on Informal Teaching Contexts Apart from the research on formal teaching environment (such as in the university’s classroom), there are emerging more informal and non-formal teaching contexts, such as self-training, training workshops of the manufacturers of CAT tools and MT

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programs, continuing education courses and weekend translation workshops or seminars organized by translators’ associations and translation companies. Researchers believe that communication between relevant parties in translator training should be fostered, e.g., “In the meantime, serious exchanges and discussion of the subject among translators, translator associations, and academic and corporate providers of training might help to move us more speedily toward an effective outcome (Hennessy 2011).” Therefore, translation teaching researches will be enriched and diversified by directing more attention to the informal teaching contexts and exploring how those high-impact practices, experiential co-curriculum and informal learning in participatory culture affect the teaching outcomes.

3.5 Integrating Technology into Translation Teaching Studies In the digital era, IT support is a necessary part of research, especially in the field of translation teaching. For example, Li underscores the need “to absorb the characteristics of interdisciplinary research, and apply technology of brain science and neuroscience to translation teaching research, by using ERP, Positron Emission Tomography (PET), fMRI and other technologies to record students’ thinking process in translation (Lv 2018).” The technologies such as screen video, the eye tracking, keystroke logging and thinking-aloud protocols open new avenues to translation and interpreting teaching research for examining the translation and interpreting performance in relation to translators and interpreters’ cognitive processes.

3.6 Borrowing from Other Disciplines Translation and interpreting teaching researches are booming in recent years, but they cover too many topics, while we feel it necessary to clarify its nature and to establish translation pedagogy as a system. The studies to date focus more on the fields inside translation and interpreting teaching, such as studies on teachers, learners, syllabus, curriculum, methodology, teaching materials, assessment and testing, training and evaluation. However, as translation is redefined and has expanded in this AI (artificial intelligence) age, there need more studies that look across the board. Future studies can borrow more from the disciplines that deal with the elements that influence teaching and learning, such as language industry, information science and communication, professional training and challenges, market demands, social reforms, national (language) policies and strategies.

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4 Conclusion Looking back at the previous translation teaching researches, we are happy to notice that great progress has been made along with the prosperity of translation studies. First of all, translation teaching research has been recognized as an important part of applied translation studies, holding a notable position and exhibiting significant value in translation studies. Second, the system of the translation and interpreting profession has been established as a system that meets the needs of language service industry. As more translators and interpreters are needed for interlingual and crosscultural communication in the digital age, we should pay more attention to translator education and facilitate translation teaching research in the following aspects: (1) Researchers need to conduct more investigation on translation learners and teachers, such as the learners’ needs and the translation teachers’ development (Guo 2016; Lv 2018), because translation teaching is also a type of service, the quality of which is dependent on teachers as strategic service providers and learners as the endproducts. (2) We need to distinguish the “theory (學 學 xue)” from “technicalities (術 術 shu),” focusing more on strategic theoretical research. Teachers should not only know how to teach effectively, but also enable to articulate the theoretical rationale. (3) Translation teaching research can benefit from the achievements of theoretical translation studies (TTS) and descriptive translation studies (DTS). They are complimentary to each other; reciprocally, advances in translation teaching research will enrich and deepen TTS and DTS; this will eventually promote the development of translation studies as a discipline.

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Youlan Tao is Professor of translation studies, a Humboldtian scholar (2009–2011) and a Fulbright scholar (2018–2019). She is currently teaching in the Department of Translation and Interpreting, College of Foreign Languages and Literatures at Fudan University in Shanghai, China. Her research interests include translation pedagogy, applied translation theories, corpusbased translation studies, reception studies. She has published three monographs, some textbooks, translated works and a number of papers in leading academic journals such as Interpreter and Translator Trainer, Perspectives, Babel, Translation Quarterly (Hong Kong) and Chinese Translators Journal. She also acts as the reviewer and Board Member of Interpreter and Translator Trainer, Perspectives, CTTL. Hui Wen is Lecturer in the Department of Translation and Interpreting, School of International Studies at Shaanxi Normal University, China. Her research work includes translation teaching studies, studies on translators and interpreters, Chinese traditional translation theory and psychological healing. She has been teaching translation for more than 20 years and devoting herself to the integration of translation teaching, translation research and translation practice. A visiting scholarat at University of Massachusetts Amherst (2009–2010) in the USA and Fudan University (2013–2014), she has published seven translated books (collections) and a number of papers in different journals at different levels. Shu-Huai Wang is Professor of translation studies of the School of Foreign Languages at Huazhong University of Science and Technology in Wuhan, China. His research interests include translation teaching, literary translation and translation criticism. As an experienced teacher and researcher, he has published more than 50 academic papers in domestic and international journals. He has completed one National Research Project for Social Sciences (whose theme is translation teaching) and published a monograph entitled On Translation Teaching (Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press, 2013). He is currently conducting a second National Research Project for Social Sciences, whose theme is literary translation.

Pragmatics and Chinese Translation Vincent X. Wang

Abstract Linguistic pragmatics examines implied meaning in the context of language use, especially on how people do things with language. This layer of meaning is certainly relevant to translation practice as well as to translation studies. In this chapter, we survey the research area and discuss two categories of studies— pragmatics as perspective and pragmatics as behaviour. We examine a case study to illustrate how speech act theory can guide empirical translation studies and bring up interesting findings. The chapter concludes with remarks on the merits and demerits of current pragmatics-oriented Chinese translation studies (TS) and suggests some directions for future research. Keywords Pragmatics · Speech act · Implicature · Directness · Translation error

1 Introduction Pragmatic meaning is definitely what translators and interpreters naturally take into account in their translation or interpreting practice. Although they may not be able to articulate pragmatic theories or relate their practical matters to sophisticated concepts, good translators should notice it when pragmatic meaning goes wrong. Scholars working on translation studies are better positioned to borrow theoretical frameworks and methods developed in linguistic pragmatics to tackle translation problems. Studies that relate translation studies to pragmatics can be largely divided into two categories—i.e. pragmatics as perspective and pragmatics as behaviour. By pragmatics as perspective, translation scholars borrow pragmatic theories and concepts—e.g. Austinian speech act theory, Gricean cooperative principle and implicature, Searlean concept of indirect speech act—to look at translation and often point out translation problems. By pragmatics as behaviour, translation scholars investigate and scrutinise specific pragmatic behaviours in the translated texts, often in comparison with the pragmatic behaviours performed in the original texts. V. X. Wang (B) University of Macau, Avenida Da Univesidade, Taipa, Macau e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 L. Lim and D. Li (eds.), Key Issues in Translation Studies in China, New Frontiers in Translation Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-5865-8_4

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This chapter reviews pragmatics-related research with particular relevance to Chinese translation. By Chinese translation, we look at research studies that involve the Chinese language, including translation both from and into Chinese. We will also use the terms ‘translator’ in a broad sense that covers both translators who work with written texts and interpreters who deliver their texts verbally, unless we specify otherwise.

2 An Overview of the Field There have been important review articles, which survey the rather general field of pragmatics and translation research in China (曾文雄 2005; 张新红 and 何自然 2001) as well as focusing on the more specific areas, e.g. the application of speech act theory in China (陈正红 2013), and the role of implicature and presupposition in translation and interpreting (Cui and Zhao 2018). The studies describe the major achievements in the course of the disciplinary development, identify the key publications and academic events, and depicting the major research directions. Of these studies, 郝苗 Hao (2012) is a recent attempt, both comprehensive and quantitative. 郝苗 Hao (2012) reviewed the research area 语用翻译研究 yˇuyòng f¯anyì yánji¯u ‘pragmatic translation studies’, using a total of 128 journal articles he manually retrieved from 13 Chinese core journals (核心期刊) published in the decade of 2001–2011 on the subject of foreign language studies (外语类种). Hao reached several observations that may still be valid for the pragmatics-oriented translation studies published in China to date. Hao’s results show that the majority of the studies is on 应用技巧研究 ‘applications and (translation) skills studies’ (63%), followed by 宏观理论研究 ‘general theoretical studies’ (25%). He found the overwhelming predominance of the studies goes to written translation (98%) rather than oral interpreting. Hao also revealed that most of the studies relied on 探讨研究 ‘exploratory studies’ (95%), while 实证研究 ‘empirical studies’ accounted for only 5% of the 128 journal articles. The most prominent theoretical frameworks studied in the studies reviewed by Hao include Habermas’s general pragmatics, Gutt’s adaptation of Relevance Theory by Sperber and Wilson (1986), Verschueren’s (1999) verbal behaviour theory based on Hallidayian systemic functional linguistics, and politeness theory proposed by Brown and Levinson (1987). These schools of pragmatic theories largely match the present investigator’s findings on more than 150 research articles he gathered for this study. The pragmatic properties elaborated in Hao’s review include translation strategies, presupposition, pragmatic markedness, discourse markers, speech acts and conversational implicatures. Chinese researchers on translation studies have been utilising concepts and theories of linguistic pragmatics for decades. The researchers have drawn on the key areas of pragmatics—in particular, speech act, implicature, deixis, presupposition— for critically evaluating translation quality and identifying translation problems. However, the direction of borrowing and implications of pragmatic notions and concepts tends to be largely from the West to China, rather than the other way round.

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Compared with the studies on pragmatics and translation published internationally today, there is still much room for developing Chinese translation studies drawing on pragmatics theories as new perspectives and as theoretical tools.

3 Two Categories of Studies on Pragmatics and Chinese Translation Chinese scholars have shown keen interest in borrowing insights and theoretical concepts from pragmatics and discourse studies to advance Chinese translation studies. Such attempts lead to two broad categories of studies—pragmatics as perspective and pragmatics as behaviour. The first by far outnumber the second.

3.1 Pragmatics as Perspective 冉永平 Ran Yongping (2006: 58) explicitly uses the term 语用视角 yˇuyòng shìjiˇao ‘pragmatics perspectives’ to denote the line of studies that draws on theoretical pragmatics to investigate translation problems. It all begins with introducing the pragmatics theories, and, of course, doing it critically is crucial. Austin’s work on speech act was introduced to Chinese academia as early as the 1970s. 许国璋 Xü Guozhang (1979) translated three selected sections of Austin’s (1975) seminal book How to Do Things with Languages from English into Chinese, and briefly introduced Austin and the basic concepts he proposed—e.g. speech act, illocutionary force and perlocutionary force. Further to Xü, Gu conducted studies on pragmatics, especially on politeness theory from the 1980s, and published extensive reviews and critiques on Austin and Searle. 顾曰国 Gu Yueguo (1989) presented a very clear account of Austin’s main contributions, using Chinese examples to illustrate the key ideas and concepts. Gu critically reviewed Austin, recounting his development of ideas and sharply pointing out the problems in his theories. Gu’s (1989) paper has been cited more than 200 times in 中国期刊全文数据库 ‘China Academic Journals Full-text Database’, and TS scholars attempted to apply Austinian theories to examine translation problems. We need to clarify that the same term 言语行为 yányˇu xíngwéi ‘language or speech behaviour/act’ in Chinese has been used by scholars to refer to two different terms in English—(a) language behaviour and (b) speech act (cf. 甘莅豪 2018). In terms of the former, 司显柱 (2007) sought the relevance to translation (studies) by drawing on verbal behaviour framework, which was largely developed by scholars on systematic function grammar. In terms of the latter on speech act, studies have much focused on illocutionary and perlocutionary acts (陈正红 2013; 平洪 2002). From the literature on Chinese translation studies, we can see that researchers have

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grasped the theoretical concept of speech act, and were able to look at the translation of speech acts as a vital part for assessing the quality of translation. In terms of pragmatics as perspective, several key ideas have been brought up by Chinese translation scholars (e.g. 付鸿军 and 刘敏 2003; 冉永平 2006): First, since the notion of speech act denotes the fact that people use language to do things—i.e. carrying out verbal interactions—the quality of translation needs to be assessed in terms of the effectiveness of doing things. A translation that fails to get the thing done as intended would be considered ineffective, problematic, or faulty. Our case study (Sect. 3) demonstrates that the translation should match the original text in terms of illocutionary and perlocutionary forces. Legislative texts, for example, evoke perlocutionary forces such as obligation, permission and prohibition, which are commonly expressed by modal verbs such as ‘shall’, ‘may (not)’ and ‘shall not’ that needs to be precisely and unequivocally rendered (cf. Cao 2009). Second, meaning is expressed by what is said, and also by what is implied, i.e. what is implicated in Gricean terminology. What is implicated is crucial for revealing the speaker’s real intention and attitude, which can be subtly manipulated to reach specific communicative goals. It is indispensable for translators to fully understand the speaker’s intended meaning, both said and unsaid. Wang (2007) illustrates an instance of mistranslation, in which the translator totally overlooked the implicit criticism on the Duke and Duchess of Windsor ‘hidden’ in the source-language text and, consequently, placed the royal couple and their romance in a favourable light in the Chinese translation. Gricean cooperative principle and the subsequent Levinsonian heuristics are instrumental for determining the conversational implicature at work (Levinson 2000). Third, context plays a key role in determining meaning. 冉永平 Ran Yongping (2006) illustrates that rich contextual meaning can be missing in the target language and culture, and the translator needs to intervene by enriching the contextual meaning for the target-text readers, such as supplementing information or even providing additional information. Ran aptly pointed out that meaning tends to be implicitly conveyed (冉永平 2006: 60). This echoes our previous point that implicitly conveyed meaning is often crucial for betraying the speakers’ intention. In terms of bringing pragmatics into perspective, two textbooks for college students are particularly worth mentioning. Both are written in Chinese—话语与 翻译 ‘Discourse and Translation’ (莫爱屏 Mo 2010a) and 语用与翻译 ‘Pragmatics and Translation’ (莫爱屏 Mo 2010b)—and released by top academic publishers in China. Both textbooks are written by Mo Aiping (莫爱屏), an eminent Chinese scholar working on pragmatics and drawing on pragmatics research to conduct translation and interpreting studies. The two books have wide coverage of the main topics on discourse and pragmatics, with key chapters dedicated to explaining the Austinian speech act theory, Searlean indirect speech act, and Gricean conversational implicature. In particular, both books use selected examples to illustrate locutionary, illocutionary and perlocutionary acts and demonstrate how the acts can be translated into and out of Chinese (Mo 2010a: Ch.2; Mo 2010b: Ch.5).

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3.2 Pragmatics as Behaviour Compared to the first line of studies (cf. 3.1), there are much fewer studies that are dedicated to describing translated pragmatic behaviours in a systematic way. The experiment-based quantitative studies conducted by Chinese scholars are not many (cf. Section. 2), while systematic quantitative investigations on pragmatic behaviours are in dearth. Although we can observe that the key pragmatic concepts and theories are known to and have been frequently used by Chinese translation scholars to deal with translation problems, there is still much room to draw on linguistic pragmatics for attempting more in-depth, systematic and descriptive TS on Chinese translation problems. The language forms (linguistic devices) that flesh out pragmatic meaning deserve investigations in their own right. For example, polite requests in English require complex syntactic structure, lengthy wording and indirect strategies. Such devices are not necessarily used in Chinese, because they do not carry the same meaning about politeness or at least the same weighting to signify politeness. On the other hand, the Chinese language tends to use other devices, esp. lexical ones, to express politeness. When the speech acts are reproduced in the target language, translators need to aim at attaining the appropriate levels of politeness so that the interlocutors do not sound too blunt or overpolite in the ears of the target language readers. However, it is not always an easy decision to make. Wang (2009) revealed that translators of different times rendered request utterances in a classic literary text differently. For example, a simple request made by a husband to his beloved wife in Shen Fu’s autobiography leads to a division between a more adaptive translation and a more loyal translation (Wang 2009: 218): (1) a. 女先生且罢论 nüˇ xi¯ansh¯eng qiˇe bà lùn ‘lady teacher just stop talking’ b. Will the lady teacher please stop a moment? [Lin] c. Stop it, lady teacher. [Pratt & Chiang] Translation (1b) is produced by Lin Yutang in 1935 (Shen 1999), which tends to adapt linguistic behaviours acceptable by English readers, while Translation (1c) is by Pratt and Chiang in 1983 (Shen 1983), which preserves a great deal of Chineseflavoured request behaviours. Lin’s (1b) differs from the original (1a) in terms of request strategy—Lin shifts to indirect request with ‘will the lady teacher’. By contrast, Pratt and Chiang’s (1c) follows (1a) in using an imperative to request. Lin’s tendency towards an acceptable translation and Pratt and Chiang’s favour of an adequate (loyal to the original) translation reflect the norms of the times they lived in. A systematic description of their rendering of the request behaviours in terms of directness, syntactic and lexical mitigation devices, as well as the position of the supportive moves, enable a fuller picture of the norms of translation of the times to manifest. The findings on the norms on pragmatic behaviours are useful for depicting translator’s style, revealing the impact of historical periods and the

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influence of the languages involved. Our case study further illustrates the value of attempting theory-guided systematic investigations.

4 A Case Study Example (2) is an excerpt from George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion. The lines in (2a) are extracted from the original text (Shaw 2017), while the lines in (2b) are from Yang Xianyi’s (杨宪益 2019) published translation, and the two lines in (2c) are from Mo’s (莫爱屏 2010b) textbook titled Pragmatics and Translation. Mo’s textbook was published by Higher Education Press (高等教育出版社), an authoritative educational publisher in China, in its highly selective book series ‘National Planning Textbook in the 11th Five-Year Plan of General Higher Education’ (普通高等教育‘ 十一五’国家级规划教材). Mo (2010b: 49) uses (2c) and its corresponding lines in English to illustrate illocutionary acts at work—one of the core ideas in Austin’s speech act theory—and to discuss how the speech acts can be properly translated. In fact, (2c) comes as the first example under the heading 以言行事行为与翻译 ‘Illocutionary Acts and Translation’ (Mo 2010b: Sect. 5.2.2). Mo rightly points out that the flower girl requests a payment of the mother, and the daughter (of the mother) bluntly rejects the request with contempt and pride, while the conversation takes place after the mother’s son inadvertently knocked the girl’s basket out of her hands and leaving the flowers scattered on the ground. Mo goes on to comment that the Chinese translation of the daughter’s line—她想得倒美 t¯a xiˇang dé dào mˇei ‘she is too wishful/she dreams of something too good (to be true)’—successfully conveys the meaning of the original text to target-text readers, vividly reproducing the daughter’s contempt on the flower girl, by means of implicature. (2)

The lines from Pygmalion, Act 1

(2a) ST with note 1

The flower girl […] Will ye-oo py me f’them? ‘Will you pay me for them?’ (note in ‘...’ by Mo 2010b)

2

The daughter

Do nothing of the sort, mother. The idea!

3

The mother

Please allow me, Clara. Have you any pennies?

4

The daughter

No. I’ve nothing smaller than sixpence

5

The flower girl [hopefully] I can give you change for a tanner, kind lady.

6

The mother

[to Clara] Give it to me. [Clara parts reluctantly]. Now [to the girl] This is for your flowers

(2b) TT by Yang with back translation 1

卖花女

[…] 您替他给钱吧?

‘flower girl’

‘[…] You pay for him?’

2

女儿

妈, 别给她。听她的!

‘daughter’

‘mum, don’t give (it) to her. Listen to her (nonsense)!’ (continued)

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(continued) (2)

The lines from Pygmalion, Act 1

3

母亲

克拉剌, 让我给她一点吧。你有零钱吗?

‘mother’

‘Clara, let me give her a little. Do you have change?’

女儿

没有。我顶小的是六便士。

‘daughter’

‘no. My smallest is six pence’

5

卖花女

(满怀希望)六便士我找的开, 好太太。

‘flower girl’

‘(hopefully) Six pence I can give change, good lady’

6

母亲

(向克拉剌)把钱给我。(克拉剌勉强把钱交给母亲)(向卖花女)拿去, 这 是赔你的花的钱。

‘mother’

‘(to Clara) Give me the money. (Clara reluctantly gives the money to her mother) (to flower girl) Take (it) away, this is the money for your flowers’

4

(2c) TT in Mo (2010b) with back translation 1 2

卖花女

你肯给钱吗?(你肯替他付钱吗?)

‘flower girl’

‘Are you willing to pay?’ (Will you play for him?)

女儿

妈, 一个子儿也别给, 她想得倒美!

‘daughter’

‘Mum, don’t give even a penny. She wants something too good (to be true)!’

ST = source-language text, TT = target-language text

Further to Mo’s (2010b) analysis, which is concise owing to the constraints of a textbook, for example (2) deserves some more careful examination in various respects. First, we need to determine what the speech acts are actually performed here. If we look closely at the two speech acts noted by Mo (2010b: 49)—a request by the flower girl and a refusal by the daughter—the second one turns out to be a request made by the daughter to her mother, rather than a refusal delivered to the flower girl. The daughter is addressing her mother, although she lets the flower girl overhear it. We now use Searle’s typology of speech act (cf. Huang 2014: Sect. 4.5), the best devised and most influential scheme following the Austinian tradition for Huang (cf. Huang 2014: 133ff), to investigate the specific speech acts performed in (2a) (see Table 1). The Searlean taxonomy consists of five types of speech acts – representatives (or assertives), directives, commissives, expressives, and declarations (or declaratives) (ibid: 133-134). In Line 2, the daughter first issues a DIRECTIVE that asks her mother to ‘do nothing of the sort’. She moves on with an exclamatory phrase—’The idea!’—that performs an EXPRESSIVE act of ridiculing the ‘idea’, airing her utterly dismissive attitude on paying the flower girl for the scattered flowers. Three speech acts are contained in the two short lines—two DIRECTIVES (more specifically, requests) and one EXPRESSIVE (more precisely, blaming). This forms the basis for our subsequent analyses. Second, a closer examination of the illocutionary and perlocutionary acts brings to light what the interlocutors are doing and how they do it. Mo (2010b: 49) is not wrong in saying the daughter refuses the flower girl’s request. However, we

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Table 1 Speech acts in the ST: types, directness and perlocutionary effect (2a)

ST

S.A.

in/direct

perlocution

1

The flower girl

[…] Will ye-oo py me f’them?

req

CID

Get a payment

2

The daughter

Do nothing of the sort, mother The idea!

req blm

D D

Refuse to pay Refuse to pay

3

The mother

Please allow me, Clara. Have you any pennies?

req req

D CID

Make payment Make payment

4

The daughter

No. I’ve nothing smaller than sixpence

asr

D

Not to pay

5

The flower girl

[hopefully] I can give you change for a tanner, kind lady

asr

D

Get the payment

6

The mother

[to Clara] Give it to me Now [to the girl] This is for your flowers

req dec

D D

Make payment Complete the payment

Abbreviations S.A. = speech act, in/direct = indirect/direct speech act, perlocution = perlocutionary act, req = request, blm = blaming, asr = assertive, dec = declarative, D = direct, CID = conventionallyindirect

need to note that, pragmatically, she did so with her perlocutionary act. There is no direct verbal exchange between the daughter and the flower girl in (2). Instead, the daughter talks to her mother, evoking strong illocutionary forces in both her request and blaming acts and intending the perlocutionary effect of thwarting the flower girl’s hope for payment (Line 2). The string of speech acts, therefore, begins with the flower girl’s request (Line 1, Table 1), which is countered by the daughter’s request and blaming, and followed by the mother’s two requests made back to the daughter—’please allow me, Clara’ and ‘have you any pennies?’. The intentions of the interlocutors are captured by their perlocutionary acts—the flower girl wants a payment for her flowers, the daughter refuses to comply, while the mother is seeking the possibility to pay. We can observe that the illocutionary acts indicate the very speech acts that the speakers are performing, while the perlocutionary acts, being effectuated by the illocutionary acts though, betray the speakers’ intended effects on the hearers. As their verbal interaction proceeds, the thread of speech acts continues with the daughter’s assertive act—’No. I’ve nothing smaller than sixpence’—which dismisses the possibility of paying with pennies, but this problem is quickly resolved with the flower girl’s assertive—’I can give you change for a tanner, kind lady’, which implicitly makes her initial request for payment alive again. The mother concludes the matter with a request—’[to Clara] give it to me’—and a DECLARATIVE—’[to the girl] this is for your flowers’ (cf. Table 1), granting the girl’s initial request. In terms of perlocutionary acts, the mother is consistent with her willingness to pay, and eventually makes it happen, while the daughter’s intended outcome fails. The two threads—one about the speech acts performed and the other about the development

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and the clashes of their perlocutionary intents—set their verbal interactions in motion on the pragmatic level—precisely ‘how to do things with words’ that Austin’s (1962) concerns. Third, Austinian speech act analyses are useful to translators and TS researchers. Although an experienced and conscientious translator should have a good sense of what is going on interpersonally and interactively in the texts they work with and Yang Xianyi indeed produced good-quality translation in (2b), systematic analysis such as what we did above is powerful to lay bare what people are doing in verbal interactions, leading to more explicit and more in-depth understanding. The results of speech act analysis are undoubtedly valuable for TS researchers, allowing them, among other things, to assess equivalence at the pragmatic level and comment on the quality of translation in context. We classified the speech acts in the two Chinese translations (2b) and (2c) in Table 2 the same way as we did to (2a) in Table 1. The translated texts mainly match the original text in (2a) in terms of the speech acts performed in a thread—it begins with the flower girl’s request for a payment, moves to the daughter’s request, blaming and assertive acts, along with the mother’s interventions with her requests back to the daughter and the girl’s assertive, largely following that in (2a). The translated texts are also very identical with (2a) in terms of the perlocutionary force of each line. We can reasonably conclude that both translated texts (2b) and (2c) follow the illocutionary acts in the original while adhering to the original in terms of perlocutionary forces evoked. The findings lend support to the quality of the two translations, for both rather loyally reproduced the speech acts performed, and the translators should indeed be given credits. However, there is still something interesting that requires further exploration, especially on the fine-grained differences between the translations and the original. The most conspicuous difference occurs in Line 6 of Yang’s translation (2b). The mother gives the tanner to the girl, saying 拿去,这是赔你的花的钱 ná qù, zhè shì péi nˇı de hu¯a de qián ‘Take (it) away, this is the money for your flowers’. Technically, Yang substitutes the DECLARATIVE conveyed by ‘Now, this is for your flowers’ in (2a) with a DIRECTIVE (more precisely, a request) act formulated by 拿去 in (2b). This shift of speech act does not seem to cause a communication problem, because the mother is paying for the flowers, a move in favour of the girl, who would accept it with thanks and delight, no matter a DIRECTIVE or DECLARATIVE act is verbalised by the mother. Yang’s request is bald on record—拿去 ‘Take (it) away’ is an imperative structure that explicitly conveys the illocutionary force of the DIRECTIVE, which is followed by a supportive move—这是赔你的花的钱 ‘this is the money for your flowers’—to give the reason for the request. Relevant information about supportive moves and the use by Chinese speakers can be found in the literature on cross-cultural and interlingual pragmatics (e.g. Blum-Kulka et al. 1989; Wang 2009, 2011 Ch.6). Yang’s formulation of the DIRECTIVE sounds unequivocally straightforward, which is probably clearer for indicating the communicative intention than do the expressions that adhere more closely to the original in (2a) ‘now, this is for your flowers’—e.g.‘ 嗳,这是赔你的花的’ a¯ i, zhè shì péi nˇı de hu¯a de ‘look, this is for your flowers’,‘好,

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Table 2 Speech acts in the TTs: types, directness and perlocutionary effect (2b)

TT by Yang with back translation

S.A.

in/direct

perlocution

1

卖花女

[…] 您替他给钱吧?

req

D

Get a payment

‘flower girl’

‘[…] You pay for him?’

女儿

妈,别给她。 听她的!

req blm

D D

Refuse to pay Don’t listen to her

‘daughter’

‘mum, don’t give (it) to her Listen to her (nonsense)!’

母亲

克拉剌,让我给她一点吧。你 req 有零钱吗? req

D CID

Make payment Make payment

‘mother’

‘Clara, let me give her a little. Do you have change?’

女儿

没有。我顶小的是六便士。

asr

D

Not to pay

‘daughter’

‘no. My smallest is six pence’

卖花女

(满怀希望)六便士我找的 开,好太太。

asr

D

Get the payment

‘flower girl’

‘(hopefully) Six pence I can give change, good lady’

母亲

(向克拉剌)把钱给我。(向卖 req 花女)拿去,这是赔你的花的 blm 钱。

D D

Make payment Complete the payment

‘mother’

‘(to Clara) Give me the money (to flower girl) Take (it) away, this is the money for your flowers’ req

CID

Get a payment

req exp

D D

Refuse to pay Refuse to pay

2

3

4 5

6

(2c)

TT in Mo (2010b) with back translation

1

卖花女

你肯给钱吗?

‘flower girl’

‘Are you willing to pay?’

女儿

妈,一个子儿也别给, 她想得倒美!

‘daughter’

‘Mum, don’t give even a penny. She wants something too good (to be true)!’

2

Abbreviations S.A. = speech act, in/direct = indirect/direct speech act, perlocution = perlocutionary act, req = request, blm = blaming, asr = assertive, exp = expressive, D = direct, CID = conventionallyindirect

这是赔你花儿的’ hˇao, zhè shì péi nˇı hu¯ar de ‘well, this is for your flowers’. Yang’s shift of the speech act is justified in view of communicative effect and efficiency. Yang’s translation differs from the original in (2a) also in terms of whether a direct or indirect DIRECTIVE is performed (cf. in Line 1, Tables 1 and 2). The original request ‘Will ye-oo py me f’them?’ (Will you pay me for them?’ made by the girl is an indirect request in Searlean theoretical position, because it uses the form/structure of

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a question (rather than a straight imperative) to issue the request. It is considered to be a conventionally-indirect (CID) request because the querying structure is commonly used in the English language for making requests (cf. Searle 1975; Huang 2014: Sect. 4.6). More precisely, it is considered a sub-type of CID that queries the hearer’s willingness to grant the request in cross-culture pragmatics literature, e.g. in the well-established and long influential taxonomy of request strategies developed in the Cross-Cultural Speech Act Realization Patterns Project (CCSARP) (cf. Blum-Kulka et al. 1989). By contrast, Yang’s 您替他给钱吧? nín tì t¯a gˇei qián ba? ‘You pay for him ba (mood particle)?’ is an imperative mitigated by a mood particle 吧 ba and a question mark. It sounds more affirmative and more imposing than 您替他给钱 吗? nín tì t¯a gˇei qián ma? ‘You pay for him ma (question particle)?’, and should be considered a direct request. Yang, therefore, replaced an indirect request with a direct one, while Mo’s translation in (2c) adheres to CID—你肯给钱吗? nˇı kˇen gˇei qián ma? ‘are you willing to pay?’ Again, Yang’s shift from the original can be justified on the ground that research indeed shows that Chinese speakers do not take direct requests as blunt and offensive as English speakers do, and lexical mitigations are effective enough to turn a direct request into a deferential and acceptable request. Yang, a native speaker of Chinese, uses two lexical mitigating devices in Line 1— 您 nín ‘you (the honorary form) and 吧 ba (mood particle)—and the request does not sound very intrusive. In addition to Yang’s shift in terms of speech act type and in the sub-type of the same speech act, Yang’s rendition of ‘the idea’ in L2 entails very subtle shift. The original EXPRESSIVE act with an exclamation mark ‘the idea!’ is rendered as 听她的! T¯ıng t¯a de! ‘Listen to her’, which takes an imperative form and can be considered as a direct request. However, our native speaker’s intuition tells us it is definitely not a request that her mother should listen to the girl. The daughter is saying 听她的!岂有此理 T¯ıng t¯a de! Qˇıyˇou cˇılˇı ‘Listen to her? Totally absurd!’, which is an EXPRESSIVE to vent her strong feeling that only a fool will comply with the girl’s request, and is in no way a request to her mother. Yang seems shift from a more loyal translation such as 如此(恶劣的)想法 rúcˇı (èluè de) xiˇangfˇa ‘what a bad idea!’ to an expression a Chinese speaker would naturally say in this situation. Yang’s rendition 听她的! takes the form of a request, but in fact functions as an EXPRESSIVE that blames the flower girl, consistent with what the EXPRESSIVE does in the original. Mo’s translation 她想得倒美! t¯a xiˇang dé dào mˇei! ‘she thought of wonderful things’ is clearly an EXPRESSIVE act of blaming, idiomatic as Mo (2010b: 49) suggests and sounds like out of the mouth of an ill-humoured Chinesespeaking teenage girl. There are further research paths to pursue—e.g. terms of address, turn-taking and the direction of dialogue, polite and rude behaviours—which we will not cover here. In summary, (2) provides rich materials about speech act performance in context, with which we can observe equivalence on the pragmatic level and investigate the intricate shifts that a leading translator naturally incorporates. Austinian speech act theory can be implemented and pragmatics concepts serve as powerful analytical tools. Yang’s shifts in the speech act formulations can be justified, based on the fact that his translation captures the perlocutionary effects as well as the thread of speech

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act development. Mo’s translation—although not as full as Yang’s—is relatively more loyal to the original in speech act behaviours. We do not want to argue in the direction that all roads lead to Rome and pragmatic equivalence can be reached anyway. Pragmatic failure in translation can happen (cf. Wang 2007) and felicitous translation requires hard efforts. The pragmatic tools enable TS scholars to articulate translation problems, delve into the ways people do things with words, and bring the studies to depth and breadth.

5 Concluding Remarks Pragmatics-informed studies in China have been growing steadily in the last three to four decades. They are now rather large in number and broad in scope. The studies are mainly published in China and in the Chinese language. However, it is not uncommon to find studies that apply pragmatic theories in a cursory manner for dealing with specific translation problems, leaving readers to wonder whether we have to resort to the ‘big’ theoretical concepts to articulate the matter and sort out a solution. There seems to be ample room for TS scholars to endeavour and tap on the full potential of linguistic pragmatics in terms of the power to explain the underpinning rules that govern our verbal communication. There are still many TS scholars can draw on Austinian speech act theories, Gricean cooperative principle and the neo-formulations, Searlean insights on indirect speech act, and Relevance Theory that succinctly explains communication in general (Sperber and Wilson 1986) and bears great potential to inform TS (Gutt 1998). Recent pragmatics studies have expanded to make use of corpus technologies (Aijmer and Rühlemann 2015), and translation studies examine a broader picture encompassing multimodality. There are ‘old’ resources to draw on and new avenues to venture. Chinese TS scholars can vision larger disciplinary scope as well as attempting emic studies in context (cf. Huang 2014: 147–149), bringing pragmatics-oriented TS to a greater depth. Acknowledgements The author sincerely thanks the reviewers of the chapter for their valuable comments and suggestions, and acknowledges research grant (MYRG2018-00174-FAH) from the University of Macau.

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Brown, P., & Levinson, S. C. (1987). Politeness: Some universals in language usage. Cambridge, England/New York: Cambridge University Press. Cao, D. (2009). Illocutionary acts of Chinese legislative language. Journal of Pragmatics, 41(7), 1329–1340. Cui, Y., & Zhao, Y. (2018). Implicature and presupposition in translation and interpreting. In K. Malmkjaer (Ed.), The Routledge handbook of translation studies and linguistics (pp. 107–120). New York: Routledge. Gutt, E.-A. (1998). Pragmatic aspect of translation: Some relevance-theory observations. In L. Hickey (Ed.), The pragmatics of translation (pp. 41–53). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Huang, Y. (2014). Pragmatics (2nd ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Levinson, S. C. (2000). Presumptive meanings: The theory of generalized conversational implicature. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Searle, J. R. (1975). Indirect speech acts. In P. Cole & J. Morgan (Eds.), Syntax and semantics: Vol. 3. Speech Acts (pp 59–82). New York: Academic Press. Shaw, G. B. (2017). Pygmalion (Complete Illustrated Edition). e-artnow. http://kkoworld.com/kit ablar/Bernard_Shaw_Secilmis_eserler_eng.pdf. Shen, Fu. (1983). Six Records of a Floating Life. Translated by Leonard Pratt and Su-Hui Chiang. London: Penguin Classics. Shen, Fu. (1999). Six Chapters of a Floating Life (浮生六記). Translated by Yutang Lin. Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press. Sperber, D., & Wilson, D. (1986). Relevance: Communication and cognition. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Verschueren, J. (1999). Understanding pragmatics. London/New York: Arnold; Oxford University Press. Wang, V. X. (2007). A pragmatic examination of translation of implied meaning. Translation Watch Quarterly, 3(3), 34–45. Wang, V. X. (2009). Pragmatic shifts in two translations of Fusheng Liuji: A descriptive study of request behaviour. Target, 21(2), 209–234. https://doi.org/10.1075/target.21.2.01wan. Wang, V. X. (2011). Making requests by Chinese EFL learners. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

References (in Chinese) 陈正红. (2013). 近十年我国言语行为理论的应用研究综述. 当代教育理论与实践 (Theory and Practice of Contemporary Education) (Theory and Practice of Contemporary Education) 5(9): 189–191. 付鸿军, 刘敏. (2003). 言语行为理论在翻译中运用的意义 (On the Significance of Applying Speech Act Theory to Translation Practice). 新疆大学学报(哲学社会科学版) (Journal of Xinjiang University, Philosophy and Social Science Edition) 31(4): 130–133. 甘莅豪. (2018). 翻译的遮蔽与创新: 中国学术语境中言语行为研究的两条学术路径 (Eclipsing and innovation of translation: The two paths of yan yu xing wei study in Chinese academia). 外 语教学理论与实践 (Foreign Language Learning Theory and Practice) (4): 32–38. 郝苗. (2012). 对近十年中国语用翻译研究的调查与分析. 外语教育 12: 173–180. 顾曰国. (1989). 奥斯汀的言语行为理论: 诠释与批判 (Austin’s speech act theory: What it is and where it is wrong). 外语教学与研究 (Foreign Language Teaching and Research) (1): 30–39. 莫爱屏. (2010a). 话语与翻译. 武汉: 武汉大学出版社. 莫爱屏. (2010b). 语用与翻译.普通高等教育“十一五”国家级规划教材. 北京: 高等教育出版社. 平洪. (2002). 话语的施事功能及其翻译策略 (Illocutionary Function and its Translation Strategies). 现代外语 (Modern Foreign Languages) 25(3): 292–298.

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冉永平. (2006). 翻译中的信息空缺、语境补缺及语用充实 (Information Gaps, Contextual Compensation and Pragmatic Enrichment in Translation or Interpreting). 外国语 (Journal of Foreign Languages) (6): 58–65. 司显柱. (2007). 言语行为框架·翻译过程·文学翻译. 外语教学 (Foreign Language Education) 28(4): 83–87. https://doi.org/10.16362/j.cnki.cn61-1023/h.2007.04.001 乔治·萧伯纳(著), and 杨宪益(译). (2019). 杨宪益中译作品集:凯撒和克莉奥佩特拉·卖花女. 上 海: 上海人民出版社. 许国璋. (1979). 论言有所为. 语言学译丛 1: 1–14. 曾文雄. (2005). 中国语用翻译研究 (A Review of Pragmatics-oriented Translation Studies in China). 解放军外国语学院学报 (Journal of PLA University of Foreign Languages) 28(2): 62–66. 张新红, 何自然. (2001). 语用翻译: 语用学理论在翻译中的应用 (Pragmatic Translation: Application of Pragmatic Theories to Translation Practice). 现代外语 (Modern Foreign Languages) 24(3): 285–293.

Vincent X. Wang associate professor of the University of Macau and a NAATI-certified translator, received his Ph.D. in Applied Linguistics from the University of Queensland (2006). He published journal articles in Target, Journal of Language, Literature and Culture and TESOLrelated periodicals, book chapters with Routledge and Brill, among others, and a monograph Making Requests by Chinese EFL Learners (John Benjamins).

Cognitive Processing Routes of Culture-Specific Linguistic Metaphors in Simultaneous Interpreting A Corpus-Assisted Study Yue Lang and Defeng Li Abstract Metaphor processing in translation has drawn much research attention. However, little attention has been paid to the cognitive processing routes of culturespecific linguistic metaphors (CSMs) in simultaneous interpreting (SI). The present study compared professional interpreters’ strategies for interpreting CSMs and literal expressions in the context of simultaneous interpreting (SI) and on this basis attempted to infer their underlying cognitive processing routes in SI with the help of a self-supported bilingual parallel SI corpus. The results showed that (1) the vertical route dominated the interpreting of literal expressions and CSMs, (2) the interpreters relied more on the vertical route in the interpreting of CSMs than that of literal expressions and (3) the grammatical unit of the source items had little influence on the cognitive process of interpreting linguistic metaphors. Keywords Cognitive processing routes · Simultaneous interpreting · Corpus-assisted approach · Culture-specific linguistic metaphors · Processing economy

1 Introduction Metaphors have been much studied from cultural, cognitive or stylistic perspectives (see Kövecses 2010). Cognitive analysis of metaphors has drawn much research attention and yielded substantial results since the proposal of conceptual metaphors by Lakoff and Johnson (1980). However, contrary to conceptual metaphors, linguistic metaphors as the surface realization of cross-domain mapping in the conceptual system (Lakoff 1993, 203) have rarely been studied (Xiang and Zheng 2011). Metaphor, as “the most important particular problem” (Newmark 1988, 104) in translation, has also been much studied by translators (Schäffner and Shuttleworth 2013). Y. Lang (B) Shanxi University, Taiyuan 030006, China e-mail: [email protected] D. Li The University of Macau, Macau, China © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 L. Lim and D. Li (eds.), Key Issues in Translation Studies in China, New Frontiers in Translation Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-5865-8_5

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In empirical studies related to the translation or interpreting of linguistic metaphors, it has been found that compared with literal expressions, linguistic metaphors might cause more cognitive load for translators and interpreters (Sjørup 2008, 2011, 2013; Tirkkonen-Condit 2001, 2002; Zheng and Zhou 2018). Although other factors such as translation expertise may also influence the cognitive process of translating metaphors, cultural specificity and contextual dependence as the striking features of metaphors are two major factors causing cognitive barriers in the process. Metaphors are “the products of the creative violation of the sematic rules of a linguistic system (Schäffner 2017, 249) and they are highly culture-specific. However, it is worth noting that some metaphors may be shared between two different languages and cultures and may not cause cognitive barriers to interpreters. For instance, the English phrase “to play an important role” and the Chinese expression banyan zhongyao juese (扮 演重要角色) share the same structure and meaning. Besides, metaphors are contextdependent and are known to contain literal as well as metaphorical meaning. This then affords interpreters with more possible choices in rendering them and therefore may also cause extra cognitive load for interpreters (Schaeffer et al. 2016). Empirical studies on the translation of metaphors have mainly focused on written translation. In these studies, metaphors have often been taken as a whole and rarely been further divided into smaller categories. In interpreting, particularly simultaneous interpreting (SI), interpreters are required to render meaning-rich metaphors in a very limited period of time. It is therefore even more complicated and challenging than in written translation (Spinolo 2018, 133). Currently, only few studies have focused on cognitive process of translating linguistic metaphors in sight translation (e.g. Xiang and Zheng 2011, 2015; Zheng and Xiang 2013) and even fewer in SI (Spinolo 2018, 135). In that sense, a cognitive study of the translation of linguistic metaphors in SI is an uncharted area to be explored. Furthermore, although a few empirical studies have been conducted on translation strategies adopted to interpret metaphors (Spinolo 2018; Spinolo and Garwood 2010), none has explored the interaction of cognitive processing routes behind the adoption of these strategies. The methods that have been adopted in studies relating to translation of metaphors in written and sight translation are mainly think-aloud protocols, eye-tracking techniques, or a combination of them (Schäffner and Shuttleworth 2013) while the corpusassisted method has seldom been used. Though Dam (2001) and Lang et al. (2018, 2019) studied the translation of conceptual barriers with the help of SI corpus, they did not focus specifically on metaphors or make any comparison between metaphorical expressions and literal ones. To fill this gap, the present research compared the strategies adopted to translate culture-specific linguistic metaphors (CSMs) and literal expressions at a lexical, phrasal and clausal level in the framework of processing economy with the help of a Chinese–English bilingual SI parallel corpus to infer the interaction of cognitive processing routes underlying the interpreting of CSMs and literal expressions.

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2 Theoretical Framework and Research Hypothesis 2.1 Theoretical Framework In SI, there are two cognitive processing routes, namely conceptual mediation and interlingual route (De Groot 2011, 320; He and Li 2015). Alternatively, they are referred to as vertical and horizontal routes or form-based and meaning-based routes, respectively. The vertical route denotes that SI processing simulates that of monolingual processing in both languages in a serial manner. In the process, the source language input is analyzed and comprehended in a bottom-up manner and it turns into a mental representation which is then processed in a top-down manner and reformulated in the target language (De Groot 2011, 320). It goes through a deverbalization and conceptual mediation process, and thus the end-product does not keep the image and the form of the source. Hence the vertical route manifests itself as the translation strategy of paraphrasing (i.e. to translate the metaphor into literal expressions in the target language) or substitution (i.e. to replace the metaphor with another homegrown metaphor in the target language). This route may cost substantial cognitive effort as the meaning of the source text must be decoded before it is encoded in the target language (Seleskovitch 1976). However, it is generally preferred by professional interpreters (Gile 2009) and its use correlates positively with professional training (Tzou et al. 2017). The horizontal route means that the source item and the target item are activated in parallel at different linguistic levels. It is a short-cut in the translation process (Paradis 1994, 328) and a specific route for translation (García 2013). Parallel activation of the source and target linguistic units will lead to the retaining of source language image and form, and this is often referred to as transcoding (i.e. maintaining the image of the source metaphor). This route is believed to be less cognitively costly as the target text is produced before a full grasp of the source meaning or in parallel with the source text (Macizo and Bajo 2006). However, the horizontal route is always considered as inferior to vertical route, which usually features translation by layman or indicates temporary stress or cognitive breakdowns of professional interpreters (Dam 2001). Theoretically, these two routes are both available in SI (De Groot 1997) while the interaction between them is assumed to be governed by a so-called processing economy principle (He 2019; He and Li 2015). In the interpreting process, the target is derived from the source and the most economical route should be chosen to produce the target (Yang 2002). Descriptively, the economized processing implies minimizing delay and shortening movement (shift of component and word order) in SI. In other words, keeping the form and image of the source (horizontal route) is more economical while conceptual mediation (vertical route) is more effortful in SI. Seen from a neurocognitive perspective, human brain tends to economize its operations, following the “neurological economy” of mental efforts (Zasiekin 2016, 125). Therefore, it is reasonable to assume that in SI, the horizontal route, as the more economical one, should be the default route and may work before the vertical route (He and Li 2015;

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Lang et al. 2018, 2019). The later will be recruited only when the production of the horizontal route is unacceptable (Schaeffer and Carl 2013). This process is in accordance with the processing economy as well as Levý’s minimax strategy, which argues that “opting for that one of the possible solutions which promises a maximum of effect with a minimum of effort” (Levý 1967, 1179). It is also predicted that a more complex grammatical unit of the source is more cognitive costly in interpreting (He and Li 2015) and requires more work of the vertical route. It should be noted that the processing economy principle works automatically and it is not a result of the conscious effort by an interpreter (He and Li 2015). Therefore, with the interference of interpreters’ conscious considerations related to the norm of the target language, context, culture and so on, the final product may not be the direct output of the horizontal route. In this light, we could argue that there should be optimal interaction between these two routes (He 2019, 36; Lang et al. 2018). In addition, in interpreting between two linguistically distinct languages like English and Chinese, always keeping the form and image of the source language may have an adverse effect on the interpreting output in the target language. To guarantee the quality of the output, professional interpreters may always monitor their output and take the vertical route to interpret the input items. In SI, as the source text is transient, interpreters must react to it most promptly, without much time to monitor and polish their renderings (Shlesinger and Malkeil 2005; Tirkkonen-Condit 2005). The immediacy of SI enables researchers to probe into the interpreter’s cognitive process with the authentic interpreting data (Setton 2011, 33). Furthermore, according to Gile’s tight rope hypothesis, interpreters always work near their capacity saturation and any extra load may lead to cognitive overload (Gile 1999). Metaphors as a figurative expression may cause a conceptual barrier for interpreters (Spinolo 2018, 133). To avoid cognitive overload and successfully complete interpreting tasks, interpreters may be more likely to turn to the route requiring less effort. Therefore, comparing the strategies of translating literal expressions and CSMs in authentic interpreting tasks may be an effective window to feature the cognitive process of interpreting metaphors.

2.2 Research Hypotheses Based on the analysis above, three research hypotheses were proposed. First of all, As the current study focused on the interpreting between linguistically distinct language performed by professional interpreters, both the interpreting of CSMs and literal expressions were expected to rely more on the vertical route to produce acceptable outputs. Descriptively, paraphrasing (and substitution) in SI of both types of source items were expected to be more than transcoding. Secondly, as the interpreting of CSMs were more cognitive costly than that of the literal expressions (TirkkonenCondit 2001, 2002), interpreters might have less time to polish their renderings in SI and more likely to keep the product of the horizontal route in the interpreting of CSMs. Therefore, it was expected that comparing with literal expressions, the interpreting

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of CSMs would depend more on the horizontal route. Descriptively, transcoding was expected to be more frequently used in the interpreting of CSMs than literal expressions. Thirdly, as the complexity of source grammatical units might be positively related to the cognitive effort (He and Li 2015), both CSM and literal expression might be influenced by the complexity of the grammatical unit of the source and larger units might be tied with frequent use of the vertical route or paraphrasing (and substitution) descriptively. To be more specific, the clausal source items (CSMs and literal expressions) might be featured by the most frequent use of the vertical route followed by the phrasal source items and the source items at the lexical level might be less likely to recruit the vertical route.

3 Materials and Methods The corpus-assisted research aims to infer interpreters’ cognitive processes with the help of descriptive and inferential statistical analysis of their usage of translation strategies in real-world interpreting tasks (Hou et al. 2019; Lang et al. 2018, 2019). Taking advantage of the high ecological validity of the data from the authentic work setting of professional interpreters, the current research explored the interaction between cognitive processing routes in the SI of CSMs and literal expressions and their translation strategies. To realize this goal, we built a self-supported Chinese–English bilingual parallel corpus with transcribed real-world interpreting data.

3.1 Chinese–English Bilingual Parallel Corpus The corpus contained the transcriptions of two Chinese speeches on literary topics and their English interpreting outputs (a total of 6 hours’ recordings). Both speeches were delivered on the campus of the University of Macau. One was by Prof. Yang Zhening on his learning and research experience as well as his book Shuguang Ji (Dawn Set) and the other speech by Prof. Bai Xianyong on his journey of producing the Youth version of Peony Pavilion in the form of Kun Opera. Literary topics were chosen because more metaphors are usually found in literature and literary translation may undergo intense conscious decision process and less transcoding (Defrancq and Rawoens 2016). The source speeches and target deliveries were transcribed verbatim manually with the help of free voice recognition service provided by Sogou. The final version of the transcription contained 41,063 Chinese characters and 18,596 English words in total. It was checked by a professional interpreter and a research assistant, and then segmented and aligned into parallel texts.

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3.2 Metaphor Identification In order to clarify the specific meaning of CSMs and identify them in the corpus, we referred to the below definition by Dickins. A metaphor is a figure of speech in which a word or phrase is used in a non-basic sense, this non-basic sense suggesting a likeness or analogy […] with another more basic sense of the same word or phrase. (Dickins 2005, 228)

Some metaphors at clausal level were also identified. For example, the sentence tian jiangyao da liang (天将要大亮) literally means “the daytime is approaching”. However, in the context of this corpus it was rendered as “[T]he country will embrace a bright future”. Additionally, many novel metaphors in literary speech were specifically used by the speakers and also ascribed to CSMs. When identifying lexical linguistic metaphors, we followed the metaphor identification procedure (MIP) proposed by Pragglejaz Group (2007). For the identification of phrasal and clausal metaphors, similar procedures were followed resembled that of the lexical metaphors and the basic meaning of these metaphors were reckoned as their literal meanings. This procedure focused on the use of indirect meaning of metaphors in a certain context in contrast with their basic or literal meaning and provided an operational approach to identify metaphors in authentic language use (Steen et al. 2010, 6). In addition, only culture-specific metaphors and novel metaphors were identified as CSMs. In the present study, literal expressions corresponding to the CSMs were also annotated for analysis. However, as the size of the corpus was very limited, it was very difficult to find literal expressions that shared the same form as the CSMs. Therefore, we identified the literal expressions based on the linguistic structures of the source. In the present research, literal expressions at the lexical level meant non-metaphorical expressions with the same POS, number of words and function as the CSMs. Literal expressions at the phrasal level referred to non-metaphorical expressions with the same structure, number of words and function as the CSMs. Clausal literal expressions referred to those clauses without metaphorical meaning while sharing similar structure and number of words with the CSMs. For example, the metaphorical expression zou wanle zhege changye (走完了 这个长夜) literally means “walk through this long night” and is implicated in the present corpus that the country “has been through the most difficult time of development”. The language structure of this expression is “verb + result complement + le + demonstrative + quantifier + object”. On the other hand, kan wanle zhechang yanchu (看完了这场演出) literally meaning “finish watching this show” shares a similar syntactical structure with the above mentioned metaphorical expression and was identified as the corresponding literal expression in the corpus.

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3.3 Translation Strategies The strategies for translating metaphors were put into four categories based on existing literature (e.g., Sjørup 2013, 75; Spinolo 2018; Toury 2012, 108), namely transcoding, paraphrasing, substitution and omission. Transcoding meant that the target retained the image and language form of the source; paraphrasing meant that the target explained the meaning of the source while discarding the image and the form of the source expression; substitution referred to the replacement of the source metaphor with another metaphor entailing a different image in the target language; omission meant no corresponding translation in the target output. For instance, pofuchenzhou (破釜沉舟; literally, to break caldrons and sink the boat) is a typical four-character idiom with metaphorical meaning. It originated from a historical story related to a famous figure in Chinese history by the name of Xiang Yu (项羽), who was determined to fight and win with no possibility of a retreat. The English translation “to break caldrons and sink the boat” was a result of using the strategy of transcoding for keeping the images and language forms of the source. When the English translation “to cut off all means of retreat” was adopted, it was the result of the strategy of paraphrasing as the image and from of the source was discarded and the meaning of the metaphor was made explicit. The English idiom “to burn one’s boats/bridges” was related to Julius Caesar and it had a similar metaphorical meaning with the source pofuchenzhou. So this was a case of substitution. Finally, when there was no corresponding translation in the target text, then it was a case of omission. For literal expressions, only three translation strategies were identified. They were transcoding, paraphrasing and omission. Substitution was not an interpreting strategy of literal expressions. Without image embedded in the source expressions, transcoding meant keeping the language form of the source; paraphrasing meant keeping the meaning while forgoing the form of the source; omission still meant no corresponding translations in the target (Chou et al. 2016).

3.4 Annotation and Cross-Check The annotation of metaphors could also not be done automatically with software and achieve acceptable accuracy currently (Shuttleworth 2013, 119), nor did their corresponding literal expressions. The identification of their translation strategies also required human efforts. Therefore, all the metaphors, literal expressions and their translation strategies were tagged manually with the help of macro add-in in Microsoft Word in the format of XML. To ensure the reliability and validity of the research, the annotation was cross-checked by three different researchers.

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4 Results and Analysis When the annotation was completed, 236 CSMs and the same amount of literal expressions were identified. The corresponding strategies for translating these CSMs and literal expressions were tabulated in Tables 1 and 2, respectively. It is worth noting that omission in simultaneous interpreting is a form of non-verbalization, which may be attributed to different factors, such as device failure, the distance between speaker and the microphone, interpreter’s cognitive system breakdown or their conscious decision. Therefore, due to spatial constraint, the cognitive mechanism behind it will not be addressed in the present paper. Descriptive statistics will be used here to illustrate general distribution patterns of translation strategies and cognitive routes while inferential statistics (chi-square test) will be used to closely examine any prominent differences between the patterns of translation strategies and cognitive processing routes of interpreting CSMs and literal expressions at different linguistic levels. As shown in Table 1, paraphrasing was found to be the dominant strategy for interpreting CSMs followed by omission and transcoding at all linguistic levels. Substitution was the least adopted strategy and it was probably due to the high cognitive effort required (Sjørup 2013, 207). In general, larger linguistic units correlated positively with the use of paraphrasing but negatively with the use of substitution. In terms of the interpreting of literal expressions, paraphrasing also took the lion’s share among the interpreting strategies, followed by omission and transcoding at all linguistic levels. Generally, larger linguistic units adopted more transcoding than smaller linguistic units in the interpreting of literal expressions. The overall omission of CSMs (33.9%) was higher than that of literal expressions (24.6%) which seemed to suggest CSMs were more difficult to interpret than literal expressions, though their difference was not pronounced (χ 2 = 4.96, p > 0.05). The distribution of strategies for translating CSMs and literal expressions were similar and the adopted strategies Table 1 Rendering strategies of CSMs Omission (%)

Transcoding (%)

Paraphrasing (%)

Substitution (%)

Total

Lexical

44

36.4

12

9.9

53

43.8

12

9.9

121

Phrasal

24

29.6

11

13.6

42

51.9

4

4.9

81

Clausal

12

35.3

2

5.9

20

58.8

0

0

34

Total

80

33.9

25

10.6

115

48.7

16

6.8

236

Table 2 Rendering strategies of literal expressions Omission (%)

Transcoding (%)

Paraphrasing (%)

Total

Lexical

31

25.6

23

19.0

67

55.4

121

Phrasal

16

19.8

18

22.2

47

58.0

81

Clausal

11

32.4

10

29.4

13

38.2

34

Total

58

24.6

51

21.6

127

53.8

236

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70.0% 60.0% 50.0% 40.0% 30.0% 20.0% 10.0% 0.0% Horizontal Vertical

Lexical (C) 9.9% 53.7%

Lexical (L) 19.0% 55.4%

Phrasal (C) 13.6% 56.8%

Phrasal (L) 22.2% 58.0%

Clausal (C) 5.9% 58.8%

Clausal (L) 29.4% 38.2%

Fig. 1 Cognitive processing routes

ranked in descending order were paraphrasing, omission and transcoding (>substitution) across the board except for the interpreting of phrasal literal expressions. In the interpreting of phrasal literal expressions, omission was found to be less used than transcoding but the gap was very small (2.4%). As stated in Sect. 2.1, translation strategies can be correlated to two cognitive processing routes, namely, horizontal and vertical routes. The horizontal route can be manifested as transcoding of CSMs and literal expressions, and the vertical route may lead to paraphrasing and substitution. The number of paraphrasing and the number of substitution were collapsed into the vertical route and the number of transcoding transferred to the horizontal route. Note that only verbalized translations were considered. For the sake of illustration, only the percentages of their actual observations were illustrated in Fig. 1 and the exact numbers could be referred to in Tables 1 and 2. As shown in Fig. 1, the vertical route overwhelmingly dominated the interpreting of CSMs as well as literal expressions. More vertical routes were adopted in the interpreting of CSMs (55.5%) than that of literal expressions (53.8%) while more use of the horizontal route was identified in the interpreting of literal expressions (21.6%) than that of CSMs (10.6%). The use of the horizontal route and the vertical route in the interpreting of CSMs was different from that in the interpreting of literal expressions (χ 2 = 7.54, p < 0.05). Specifically speaking, with the increase of complexity of the source grammatical units, the interpreting of CSMs engaged more use of the vertical route while the interpreting of literal expressions engaged more use of the horizontal route. However, there was no significant difference between the cognitive processing routes recruited for the interpreting of lexical, phrasal and clausal CSMs (lexical versus phrasal, χ2 = 0.32, p > 0.05; lexical versus clausal, χ2 = 0.18, p > 0.05; phrasal versus clausal, χ2 = 0.58, p > 0.05) as well as literal expressions (lexical versus phrasal, χ2 = 0.09, p > 0.05; lexical versus clausal, χ2 = 2.85, p > 0.05; phrasal versus clausal, χ2 =

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1.95, p > 0.05). It seemed that the complexity of the source grammatical units did not significantly influence the cognitive processing routes of interpreting CSMs and literal expressions. There were also no significant differences between the cognitive processing routes for interpreting CSMs and literal expressions at the lexical level (χ2 = 2.49 p > 0.05) or the phrasal level (χ2 = 1.18 p > 0.05). However, significant effect was observed at the clausal level between these two types of sources (χ2 = 6.80 p < 0.05).

5 Discussions As shown above, the processing of CSMs and literal expressions at different linguistic levels incurred different interaction patterns of the horizontal and the vertical routes. Two major effects were observed, namely, the vertical route dominant effect and the CSM-specific effect. But the predicted grammatical unit effect was not salient.

5.1 Vertical Route Versus Horizontal Route Table 1 showed that paraphrasing was the most frequently used translation strategy while Fig. 1 demonstrated that the vertical route dominated the interpreting of CSMs as well as literal expressions. These observations were in accordance with our first hypothesis. Though substitution, as the most cognitive costly strategy (Sjørup 2013, 207), was least frequently adopted, when its number of instances was added to that of paraphrasing, they still dominated the interpreting strategies across the board. This seems to be in line with the argument that interpreters are always taught to paraphrase metaphors when they are learning SI (Spinolo and Garwood 2010) and this habit developed in their training seems to guide their professional practice to some extent. This result is congruent with the findings of a corpus-assisted SI study conducted by Lang and her colleagues (Lang et al. 2018, 2019), which found that in L1 to L2 SI, conceptual barriers (culture-specific items) were mostly rendered by way of paraphrasing. However, Spinolo and Garwood (2010) yielded different results and they found that culture-specific creative metaphors were usually interpreted literally. But they did not explicate the interpreting direction they studied, that is, whether the interpreting was from L1 to L2 or from L2 to L1 and they mainly focused on the metaphors in political contexts. Political texts belonged to sensitive texts and transcoding was more generally preferred in such context (He 2010). This might have affected the strategies adopted. Spinolo (2018) also found translation strategy patterns different from the present study. The overall pattern displayed in the usage of different strategies in the interpretation of metaphors was featured as transcoding > paraphrasing > substitution > omission. The similarity between the language pair (Spanish and Italian) involved in the study might be the main cause of the frequent use of transcoding and the least frequent occurrence of omission.

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Furthermore, the results of the present study were also different from the results of a research project on the cognitive mechanism of written translation conducted with a multi-translational bilingual corpus by Chou et al. (2016). In their study, transcoding was found to be the most frequently used strategy in the translation of conceptual barriers (culture-specific items) in literary texts, which was thought to be a reflection of the processing economy in translation. The inconsistent results may be explained in at least two ways. First, in written translation, the sources were permanently available for translators for their reference, so the target tended to be influenced by the structure of the sources (Jakobsen 2019, 107). Second, Chou et al. (2016) focused on translation from English to Chinese while Lang et al. (2018, 2019) and the current research focused on interpreting from Chinese to English. As the research subjects were all Chinese translators and interpreters, the directions of these studies were different. In general, L2–L1 interpreting was claimed to engage in more paraphrasing than transcoding even for professional interpreters (Tzou et al. 2017). For the translation of literal expressions, the results of the present study were in line with that of Chou et al. (2016). The preference for paraphrasing might be due to that the literal expressions caused less cognitive load for interpreters compared with metaphorical expressions and that professional interpreters’ experience and expertise enabled them to allocate more cognitive resources to further monitor and revise their renderings in translation and interpreting alike. Transcoding is less effortful and is essential in SI (Fabbro et al. 1990), but its overuse can still result in translations in low quality and acceptability, especially when interpreting is conducted between two unrelated languages like English and Chinese. Previously, professional translators were found to prefer to use paraphrasing in their final product (Lörscher 1991, 276). To put it concretely, professionals tended to adopt the least effortful strategy on the premise that the quality of the translation was guaranteed, and if necessary, they would also revise the output (Dimitrova 2005, 234) and use paraphrasing in the end. Besides, translation or interpreting on the topic of literature-related topic was predicted to be more resistant to keeping strictly the form of the source in translation (Lefer 2012) and this tendency might also have been kept both in the interpreting of CSMs and literal expressions. Cognitively speaking, the horizontal and vertical routes are both at work in SI and used in different proportions in an economized manner (He 2019). It has been argued that the horizontal route is used automatically in translation and interpreting and professional training is necessary to make interpreters understand the ineffectiveness of the horizontal route when the output is inappropriate (Maier et al. 2017). In other words, as a result of the structural priming effect, the horizontal route as the most economized processing route will work first (Defrancq and Rawoens 2016; de León 2017; Shaeffer and Carl 2013; Weiland et al. 2014) and the vertical route will follow if the output of the horizontal processing is evaluated as inappropriate by the monitor mechanism. In addition, the present study only collected data from professional interpreters, whose L2 proficiency and translation expertise were both very high. With their level of L2 proficiency, it was easy for these bilinguals to go for

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conceptual mediation or the vertical route in the interlingual transfer process, especially when the translation was from L1 to L2 (Kroll and Stewart 1994). Additionally, the dissimilarity between cultures and languages may also be a factor contributing to the dominant use of the vertical route. Translation between two structurally similar languages is easier and the translation output as a result of taking the horizontal route is more likely to be acceptable in the target language. However, if the two languages involved in a translation task do not share many similar structures, the translation output from taking the horizontal route is often unacceptable. Furthermore, interpreters are generally trained to avoid the overuse of literal translation as a method (Maier et al. 2017). Professional interpreters with rich interpreting experiences were also found to have the tendency to produce fewer literal translations than professional translators when completing the same sight translation task (Jakobson et al. 2007) or written translation task (Pavlovi´c and Antunovi´c 2013). Professional interpreters’ preference for paraphrasing may indicate that intensive interpreting training and practice enable interpreters to adopt the vertical route directly and produce a translation of high quality despite the huge time pressure. From the analysis above, we can tell that the interaction of the vertical and horizontal routes seems to be influenced by the processing economy principle. However, they may also be influenced by other factors such as translation modality, interpreter’s expertise, translation direction and so on. This is in accordance with the prediction of the optimal interaction between the horizontal and vertical routes and the latter will replace the former when the translator finds it necessary (Sjørup 2013, 207).

5.2 CSMs Versus Literal Expressions Table 1 showed that the interpreting of CSMs relied more on the vertical route and paraphrasing at the descriptive level than literal expressions and the differences between the cognitive processing routes of interpreting CSMs and literal expressions were pronounced. This result did not confirm the second hypothesis. More specifically, at the clausal level, the difference between the use of the horizontal and vertical routes in interpreting CSMs and literal expressions was significant and, compared with the interpreting of literal expressions, the interpreting of clausal CSMs relied more on the vertical route. This pattern was in line with the overall findings. However, at the lexical and phrasal level, the difference between the use of the horizontal and vertical routes in interpreting CSMs and literal expressions was not significant. This nondistinctive result may be due to these expressions are not presented individually and always embedded in the context which may facilitate metaphor processing (Gildea and Glucksberg 1983). To comprehend metaphors correctly, we need to choose the concept most suitable for the current context among all the activated concepts and inhibit other unrelated concepts. Therefore, the comprehension of metaphors is more difficult than literal expressions and more cognitively costly especially in reading for translation (Wang and Mei 2017; Zheng and Zhou 2018). Additionally, the translations of metaphors are

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also more difficult to produce than that of the literal expressions (Sjørup 2013). The translation process may be more difficult if the metaphors are culture-specific and translators or interpreters cannot find their equivalents or correspondents readily in the target language. Zheng and Zhou (2018) found that in sight translation, the participants mainly recruited the horizontal route to translate metaphors, which differed from the results of the current study. This difference might be due to the translation expertise of the observed interpreters, the presentation of the source or the genre of the texts. Zheng and Zhou (2018) recruited MA students instead of professional interpreters and student interpreters were found to be more often engaged in horizontal processing (Ilic 1990; Fabbro et al. 1991). The input modality might have also influenced the results. In sight translation, the source is permanently present visually and available for them to revisit, so interpreters are more likely to be affected by the source text, hence more transcoding (Jakobsen 2019, 107). Additionally, the stimuli in Zheng and Zhou (2018) were political texts which were generally considered sensitive and transcoding was more preferred in such context (He 2010). However, the present study produced findings consistent with Dam’s SI corpusbased study (2001), which asserted that the increasing difficulty of the source text was correlated with more frequent use of the vertical route. That is, when the source text was too difficult, particularly when there were no equivalent expressions in the target language, interpreters had to adopt conceptual mediation and explain the meaning of it. For example, yimapingchuan (一马平川; a word-for-word gloss is ‘a horse plain land’) is culturally specific to Chinese and interpreters could not find correspondents or equivalents in the target language and rendered it as “barely have any mountains”. This translation expressed the meaning of the source but discarded the image and language form of the source via conceptual mediation. Though this route was more costly, the interpreters in the current study were professionals and they were able to complete such complex processes in a very short period of time with the help of their rich experiences and task-specific cognitive skills. CSMs are not shared by the target language and retaining the image and structure of the source text in the target language via transcoding may reduce the cognitive load of interpreters, but they may cause cognitive barriers to the audience. That is, if we transcode the Chinese expression wenhua turang (文化土壤) into “culture soil”, the phrase will probably defy a good understanding by the English speaking reader. Besides, metaphors have metaphorical as well as literal meanings and always have a high translation entropy, namely a number of translation alternatives (Schaeffer et al. 2016), so interpreters may face high level of uncertainty in the translation decision process and will have to make more conscious choices (Angelone 2010). This might contribute to their frequent use of the vertical route in practical interpreting. Compared with CSMs, processing of literal expressions relied more on the horizontal route. This was probably due to some shared structures between the two languages involved in the linguistic transfer. Under such circumstances, transcoding was the least costly translation strategy and would not negatively influence the quality of translation. For example, the Chinese literal expression jianzhi jiaoshi (兼职教 师) and the English expression part-time teacher (literal meaning of “兼职教师”) shared the same concept and structure, so a translation via the horizontal route was

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acceptable. However, if the concept was shared between the two languages but the linguistic structures differed, the vertical route might also be used. For instance, the Chinese expression zuxian chuangzao de chengjiu (祖先创造的成就; literally meaning ‘ancestors create achievements’) is translated as what our predecessors have done. In general, the interpreter seems to go via the horizontal route only if they are cognitively overloaded or unable to find an appropriate translation correspondent in the target language in metaphor translation. The present study only focused on professional interpreters. Their expertise and the ethical requirement of producing high-quality outputs perhaps made them more prone towards the vertical route. In the interpreting of literal expressions, as long as the translation output via the horizontal route was acceptable, there was no need to go through the conceptual mediation. Therefore, the translation was less cognitively effortful and more transcoding were detected in the final output.

5.3 Lexical Versus Phrasal Versus Clausal As shown in Tables 1 and 2, the processing of CSMs and literal expressions were both immune from the influence of the grammatical unit of the source, which rejected the third hypothesis. It was interesting to find that the grammatical unit of the source was not an important factor that influenced the cognitive processes of SI. Though descriptively, it was observed that the interpreting of CSMs of the more complex grammatical units was positively correlated with the use of the vertical route and that the interpreting of the more complex literal expressions was positively correlated with the use of the horizontal route. None of the differences among the cognitive processing routes used in the interpreting of the clausal, phrasal and lexical source items were found to be significant. This finding was partly in agreement with Lang et al. (2018), in which the effect of grammatical units on the interpreting of proper names and nonproper names (including metaphors and idioms) was found to be different. Cognitive effort increased with the size of the grammatical units in the interpreting of proper names but not in the interpreting of non-proper names. This difference indicated that only if interpreters were translating source items (e.g. proper names) susceptible to influences of language-form-related features could their cognitive process be impacted. However, metaphors are closely related to concepts regardless of their grammatical units and if there is sufficient time and cognitive resources available, professional interpreters will monitor the output via the horizontal route and when necessary, resort to the vertical route to produce the final translation. For the translation of literal expressions, there may be more cognitive resources that can be spared for monitoring and revising the output, so interpreters would resort to the vertical route to ensure and enhance the quality of the output. Although it has been found in neurocognitive studies that the cognitive process of the source items are significantly influenced by the complexities of the source unit (García 2013), in real-world interpreting tasks, all the source units are embedded and processed in a larger context, which may be the main reason for the insignificant difference among the cognitive

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processing routes recruited in the interpreting of source items at different linguistic levels.

6 Conclusion The present study explored professional interpreters’ cognitive processing routes of CSMs and literal expressions in SI, with the assistance of a bilingual parallel corpus built with data from real-time SI tasks. It was assumed that the mental activities of an interpreter in SI can be reflected in the accumulated data set (see Lang et al. 2019). Under the framework of processing economy, we analyzed the translation strategies in the interpreting of CSMs and literal expressions and related it to the cognitive processing routes. Two major effects were observed from our data, namely the dominant effect of the vertical route (i.e. the interpreting of CSMs and literal expressions both relying more on the vertical route) and the effect of metaphor (the interpreting of CSMs depending more on the vertical route than that of literal expressions). However, the effect of the grammatical unit of the source text was not identified in the current research. That is, the more complex source grammatical units were not found to require more processing via the vertical route. It seems that in authentic interpreting tasks, many factors may influence the cognitive process of interpreting and offset the effect of the underlying processing economy. The influence of these factors may lead to the optimal pattern of the interaction between the vertical and horizontal routes. These findings highlighted the professional interpreters’ advantage of better task-specific cognitive skills and rich practical experience. It seems that intense interpreting training and practice can facilitate the automatic and efficient operation of the monitoring mechanism and the adoption of the vertical route. Besides, high L2 proficiency and rich knowledge of L1 and L2 languages and cultures are very helpful to reduce the interpreters’ cognitive effort needed to invest in translating CSMs and to allocate cognitive resources to the monitoring of their output in order to produce quality translation. In the future, more comprehensive studies can be done with larger corpus containing data from professional interpreters as well as student interpreters. The corpus method may be strengthened by triangulation with online methods, such as eye-tracking and transloging experiments, in order to gain deeper sight into the cognitive mechanism of interpreting in general and the interpreting of linguistic metaphors in particular. Acknowledgements This study was funded by The National Social Science Fund of China [Project No. 19BYY126].

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Yue Lang received her Ph.D. in Linguistics (English) at the University of Macau. She is lecturer in the School of Foreign Languages in Shanxi University in Shanxi, China. Her research interests include corpus-assisted translation and interpreting studies and empirical research on cognitive processes of translation and interpreting. Defeng Li a Professor of Translation Studies and Director of the Centre for Studies of Translation, Interpreting and Cognition (CSTIC) at the University of Macau. Prior to his current appointment, he served as Chair of the Centre for Translation Studies and Reader in Translation Studies at SOAS, University of London; Director of the MA in Translation and Associate Professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong; Dean and Chair Professor at Shandong University; and (visiting) Chair Professor at Shanghai Jiaotong University. He is currently President of World Interpreter and Translator Training Association (WITTA). He has researched and published extensively in the field of cognitive translation studies, corpus-assisted translation studies, curriculum development in translator training, research methods in translation studies, professional translation (e.g. business, journalistic, legal translation), as well as second language education.

From Faithfulness to Information Quality: On 信 in Translation Studies Chu-Ren Huang and Xiaowen Wang

Abstract Yan Fu’s three challenges in translation 譯事三難 were put forward based on his experience in translating Thomas Huxley’s Evolution and Ethics 天演論. However, it has been suggested that Xin 信 (faithful), Da 達 (expressive), and Ya 雅 (elegant) actually were ‘translated’ from Tytler’s ([1790] 1907) Three Principles of Translation: that good translation should fully represent the (1) ideas and (2) style of the original and should (3) possess the ease of original composition. Being Xin, Da, and Ya has been upheld as the dictum defining three hierarchical levels for good translation in the Chinese context. Following this dictum, Ya (elegant) is the elusive ultimate goal, while Xin has been assumed to be a baseline of translation that is easily attainable. Chao (1969a, b), however, argued that the full functional representation of Xin 信 should instead be the most critical test of good translation, influenced by Eugene Nida’s functional equivalence, and perhaps aware of Tytler’s three principles. Elaborating on Y. R. Chao’s position by incorporating the new concept of information quality, this paper shows that the claims of easy attainment of Xin 信 is misled and misleading. We point out that it is impossible to find direct mapping between word meanings of two languages and the meanings of translation equivalents are overlapping depending on context. Therefore, verbatim translation is by no means Xin; rather, Xin must be judged by the quality of the transferred information. In particular, we illustrate how interpreting Xin 信 as requiring translation with high information quality will truly define good translation with the translation of two near synonym pairs. Xin as information quality can only be achieved by careful consideration of meanings in context in both languages. We conclude that Xin requires a careful study into comparable corpora to find the optimal choice of a particular word in a specific C.-R. Huang (B) Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, China e-mail: [email protected] X. Wang School of English Education, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, Guangzhou, China e-mail: [email protected] Faculty of Humanities, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, China © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 L. Lim and D. Li (eds.), Key Issues in Translation Studies in China, New Frontiers in Translation Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-5865-8_6

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context, especially when several near synonyms are in competition for the same core meaning in both source and target languages. The concept of and emphasis on information quality should be critical foundation of the value of translation in the highly connected context of information economy. Keywords Faithfulness · Information quality · Translation principles · Comparable corpora

1 Introduction: Is 信 Really Easily Attainable in Translation? Interpreting and elaborating on Yan Fu’s Three Challenges to Translation 譯事三 難, a standard though not universal view among translation studies is that Xin 信 (faithful) is the first and most attainable level of good translation. By Xin 信, it is often assumed that the requirement is verbatim word-for-word translation. The premise of such claim is that a word-to-word conversion is dictionary-based; hence, the accuracy is easy to attain and/or verify. Yet to the best of our knowledge this position is assumed and never empirically proved. In addition, although it is doubtful that Yan Fu ever read the original book, it seems likely his three challenges of 信達雅 is in fact a paraphrase of Tytler’s ([1790] 1907) Three Principles of Translation: (1) First General Rule: A translation should give complete transcript of the ideas in the original work. (2) Second General Rule: The style and manner of writing in a translation should be of the same character as that of the original. (3) Third General Rule: A translation should have the ease of original composition. It is not hard to see that 信達雅 is in fact a pretty good translation of Tytler’s three principles. Yet, they are not quite the same. Note that Tytler’s first general principle is written from the writer’s perspective. The second general rule is from the translator’s point of view. And the third general rule follows the reader perspective. If Xin 信 does stand for Tytler’s first general principle, the current verbatim interpretation is addressing the wrong issue and from the wrong perspective. Note that reading is the transfer of information from writer to reader mediated by text. Similarly, translation is the complex event to make this possible when the writer and reader use different languages. Hence, translation is the transfer of information from writer to reader mediated by hyperlinked texts mediated by translator. Tytler’s three general rules can be put in this perspective. These rules ensure that the information content as conveyed by the writer is not lost; that the stylistic features are preserved; and that the text quality is good for the reader to get the content. In sum, we could argue that the three rules are coordinated to ensure that the information quality is high for the transferred content. Chao (1969a, b) proposed a criterion more in line with Tytler, framed the context of 信達雅, though seems to be at odds with their standard interpretation. Y. R. Chao used ‘fidelity’ to stand for Xin 信 and argued

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that it is the ultimate goal of translation, similarly adopting the criterion of the quality of the transferred information. Following Saussurian structuralism, Chao argued that forms may vary (‘There are translations and translations’), yet a successful translation cannot be judged by the form, but only by whether the information transmitted is felicitous or not. That is, Xin 信 should be applied to the ideas/the information contents and hence is the highest dimension of translation. This view is echoed in recent studies of knowledge engineering and information sciences, where information quality and trustworthiness have become a central research issue (e.g. Tate 2018; Su et al. 2010; Kelton et al. 2008). It is perhaps not coincidence that another prevalent meaning of Xin 信 in Chinese is in fact ‘trust’. In the fast evolving and highly connected knowledge economy, many conceptual and measurement frameworks for information quality have been proposed. For the purpose of this conceptual study, we adapt one of the classical 4 criteria model of data quality by Wang and Strong (1996) and add the principle trust as the fifth principle (e.g. McConnell-Ginet 2018), as the overwhelming quantity and accessibility of digital content means that independent verification is not always possible and trust of the sources is crucial. In our discussion, we assume that the quality of information can be measured by how (1) accessible and (2) interpretable the data is; how (3) relevant and (4) accurate the information content is; and how (5) trustworthy the source is. In other words, the author entrusts the translator to transfer the representational and expressive content of the text accurately and makes it accessible to the reader. And the reader(s) likewise entrust the translator to deliver accurately and accessibly the representational and expressive content from the author. The principles of translation are to ensure the trustworthiness of the process and the quality of information. This view is in fact compatible and supported by the most recent theory in brain sciences and neuro-cognitive studies. Translation can be an example of cognitive activities that requires ‘multi-brain frame of reference’ (Hansson et al. 2012). Based on this newest trend in theory of neuro-cognitive studies, many important human cognitive activities are the result of functions of multiple brains (as processors) working together and reacting to each other. In translation, the collaboration and reaction (among the brains of writer, translator, and reader) is mediated by texts in two (or more) languages. Hence, one could argue that any one or more of the ‘brains’ involved could be the frame of reference to judge the quality of the information. Taking the multi-brain frame of reference for information quality and trustworthiness, as well as Tytler’s general rules and Chao’s ultimate dimension of Xin 信 as fidelity (or, our own preference, ‘felicity’), it is easy to see why the ‘common-sense’ view of Xin 信 as verbatim faithfulness does not work well. The first challenge is faithful according to who (the writer, the translator, the reader, or the content in abstract) or what (which dictionary). Bilingual dictionaries, the currently default frame of reference for Xin 信, are not participant of the cognitive process and play no direct role in the determination of information quality. In fact, each translation equivalence pair in a dictionary presupposes a context that is not expressed and may or may not be appropriate in the context of the actual text being translated. There is no effective way to establish that these verbatim pairs are appropriate without checking the intention (of the author and translator) and the comprehension (of the translator

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and reader). In addition, a text is rarely simply a declarative representation of knowledge, and there are the following complex dimensions of linguistic meanings and expressions whose complex sum constitutes the ‘ideas’ of a text. In addition to declarative and compositional meaning, sentences in a text carry a complex aggregation of various aspects of information. Furthermore, the ‘style and manner’ (borrowing Tytler’s terms) and other meta-linguistic devices affect how a piece of information is delivered and perceived and often provide crucial contextual information, such as the speaker’s intention or assumption, or the assumed social norm, etc. In terms of linguistic meaning, other than the propositional or compositional meanings derivable directly from the grammatical units, additional aspects of meanings include but are not limited to: speech act functions of the sentence (whether a sentence is a command, request, question seeking information, etc.), emotion/sentiment (the so-called expressive meaning), and stance. Stance broadly speaking marks the position or attitude of a speaker and can be particularly complex and varies widely from language to language as well as different sociocultural contexts. Past research (Biber 2006; Biber and Finegan 1989; Hunston and Thompson 2000; Hyland and Guinda 2012) on stance ranged from epistemicity, evidentiality, power relations (low-to-high, high-to-low, etc.), voices, etc. Stance markers are typically incorporated in the language system. The second and even more subtle part involves no regular explicit markers but conveys important information: First, ‘hedging’ is very often used in academic and professional contexts. It is also possible that people might lie, use vague/evasive language, understatement, and/or hyperbole/embellishment (so-called weasel or peacock in modern parlance). People can also use complex linguistic devices to express meaning non-literally with or without emotion, such as opposites, counterfactual, irony, sarcasm, and most frequently metaphor, or synaesthesia. And in a context of language contact (such as our highly connected society today) or a multi-lingual society, speakers may use either code-switching or code-mixing. And last but not the least, errors and/or repair can appear in a text. Each of these meta-linguistic cues above carry important information that will play a role in the reader’s decision of trustworthiness of the conveyed information as well as his/her decision on which part of the information to accept (i.e. ‘believe’). All the information needs to be taken into consideration to decide whether a particular choice (of words, expression, or style, etc.) in translation is felicitous (Xin 信). And all these factors must be observed and aggregated to determine the quality of translation. By revisiting the concept of Xin 信 in the context of Tytler’s three general rules and Chao’s claim of its being the ultimate dimension of translation, we tried to underline the critical role of information quality and trustworthiness in the determination of translation quality. Our goal in this paper, however, is not to set up a comprehensive theory of information quality and trustworthiness in translation studies. They will require a book-length (or longer) treatment. Our more modest aim in this paper, in fact, is to offer comprehensive account and detailed analysis of the inadequacy of the simple dictionary-based concept of translation equivalence and data science. 100% verbatim translation equivalence is not an achievable goal and accounts for what is the missing/mismatched conceptual content. It is our hope that by showing the

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underlining linguistic issues behind these examples, we do have better understanding of the pitfalls and get a better grasp of doing good translation transfer. In Sect. 2, we focus on the various morpho-semantic conditions that create mismatches between translation equivalents. In Sect. 3, applying data, we illustrate how near synonym pairs (words with the near identical meanings to each other) are in fact challenging because each language may have drastically different ways to differentiate two near synonyms. In summary, we will reiterate the importance of New IQ: Information Quality.

2 Verbatim Is not 信 That verbatim translation is the foundational first step of translation is based on the erroneous premise that translation equivalents in two languages are synonyms. Mapping Yan Fu’s 信 to Tytler’s first general rule, one can see that the synonym assumption is crucial in allowing a verbatim translation to achieve ‘the transcript of the ideas’ in a trivial sense that all words from the original text are faithfully represented. However, multi-lingual WordNet-driven research in the past 20 years has clearly shown that translation correspondences in two languages are often not meaning equivalents (Soria et al. 2009). In addition, translation pairs often have different semantic relations and such relations can in fact be leveraged to discover related translation terms (Huang et al. 2003). In this section, we summarize the most frequent types of non-synonymous translation pairs that pose challenge to the hypothesis that word-for-word translation can provide a reliable list of comparable ideas. Many of these Chinese/English pairs were originally reported and discussed in Huang (2002), as part of contribution to eventual ISO standard for electronic lexicon (LMF, Francopoulo 2013; Francopoulo and Huang 2014) and based on extensive study of more than 100,000 EC/CE word pairs based on Sinica BOW (Huang et al. 2010).

2.1 Direction of Word-for-Word Translation Most translation correspondences are either an over-translation or under-translation or both. These problems often stem from a fundamental design weakness shared by many bilingual dictionaries. That is, translation correspondences are directional and non-symmetric. When Word1 in source language La is ‘translated’ as Word2 in target language Lb , it does not mean Word2 can be translated as Word1 when the source–target relation is reversed. (1) Consider, for example, the pair of ‘translation equivalents’ phoenix in English, and 鳳凰 feng4huang2 in Chinese. Most dictionaries list them as equivalents without

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competing translations. Yet translation from phoenix to 鳳凰 feng4huang2 loses the meaning of dying and rebirth in fire (among other information). And translation from 鳳凰 feng4huang2 to phoenix loses the meaning of a matching pair consisting of the male 鳳 feng4 and female 凰 huang2. (2) Consider next the well-known case of translation of kinship terms. In bilingual dictionaries, it is likely that all three Chinese terms {伯伯 bo2bo, 叔叔 shu1shu, 舅舅 jiu4jiu} would be given the same translation uncle, while uncle in English could be assigned any number of translations. In any possible translation pairs, a translation from English to Chinese is always an over-translation, and a translation from Chinese to English is under-translated. There are possible ‘precise’ translations, such as 伯 伯 bo2bo can be translated as elder paternal uncle. Yet, such translation will violate Tytler’s third rule (i.e. 雅), but most of all keep infelicitous as it is not a term that would be used in English to refer to a close relative.

2.2 Ambiguity in Word-for-Word Translation Translation pairs can have many-to-many meaning mappings between source and target languages. (3a) Mandarin (Orange), Tangerine, Orange (3b) 橘子 ju2zi, 柳橙 liu3cheng2 We next look at some English and Chinese words for common citrus. There is no doubt that English orange and Chinese 橘子 ju2zi are the most frequently used words for common citrus in each language. Hence, this pair or words are among the first words taught to second language learners as translation equivalents, in accordance with what dictionaries routinely put. Yet, more careful learners will soon discover that Chinese 橘子 ju2zi refers to a citrus that is oblate (not globe-shaped, easy to peel, and often eaten fresh). This fruit is in fact called either mandarin (orange) or tangerine in English. On the other hand, English orange is globe-shaped and difficult to peel and often consumed in the form of orange juice. For this type of fruit, the Chinese term is in fact (柳)橙 liu3cheng2. Why is English orange considered as translation correspondence of 橘子 ju2zi? We can add to the puzzle by observing that in fact Chinese does prefer 橙色 cheng2se4 (over 橘色 ju2se4) when referring to the orange colour, the strongly conventionalized term in English (where mandarin or tangerine almost never refer to colour). Why do speakers in bilingual context insist on linking orange to 橘子 ju2zi, while at least some of them are aware of the fact and context that orange is 橙 cheng2? Here, we have two incompatible classification systems yet interestingly the pair that won out as the conventionalized translation pairs was dictated by the frequency effect and violated the common sense of referring to the same object. In other words, orange and 橘子 may be the result of applying the third rule, for ease and elegance, before the others. And the rule

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is applied surprisingly at the word-to-word transfer level. This example shows that words in the same conceptual domain in two different languages may have many-tomany non-homomorphic mappings and that in translation, the three rules, by Tytler or by Yan Fu, may compete against each other and do not apply sequentially or hierarchically, as suggested in earlier literature.

2.3 Non-uniqueness of Transliteration One of Y. R. Chao’s most influential contributions to theoretical linguistics is the concept of non-uniqueness in phonemic analysis (Chao 1934). He argued that in the case of competing accounts offering (almost) equally good solution for phonemic analysis, there might not be a single unique best solution and both solutions might exist and be adopted by different speakers. Similarly, when a word is transcribed from one language to the other, a.k.a. transliteration, we may expect that there are non-unique solutions. This is somewhat troublesome in language as we expect named entities (i.e. those belonging to the ‘proper name’ category) to have unique names, while a source language typically respects this unique name condition and allows context to disambiguate when more than one entities share the same name, yet a target language tends to feel uncomfortable with assigning different foreign entities the same name and would so do something in the process to differentiate these entities. This tendency leads to a wide range of non-unique transliterations. That is, a single source language name would lead to different transliterations given different contexts and/or persons. Of course, it is also possible, though a bit less often, that two different names with similar sounds can be transliterated to the same name in the source language. Such confusion can happen in a lot of contexts, especially in different variants of the same language (Huang et al. 2007). We summarize their different types and the challenge they pose to felicitous word-for-word translation for such named entities. One common source of non-unique transliterated names is because they are translated by different people, especially when translation is done at different times or for different varieties of the language. For instance, ex-president Bill Clinton is transliterated as 柯林頓 ke1lin2dun4 in Taiwan and as 克林頓 ke4lin2dun4 in Mainland China, with the identical phonemes but with different tones for the first character. In addition, for ex-senator and presidential candidate Hilary Clinton, English will follow the convention and use last name Clinton to refer to her. Yet, in Chinese since the most accessible transliteration of Clinton was already taken to refer to her husband, the convention is to transliterate her first name instead as 希拉蕊 xi1la1rui3 (Taiwan), 希拉里 xi1la1li3 (Mainland China), or 希拉莉 xi1la1li4 (Hong Kong). All these terms (希拉蕊, 希拉里, or 希拉莉) should in terms be translated back as ‘(senator) Clinton’. Hence, the non-uniqueness involves not just potentially ambiguous reference but also direction of transliteration. That is, there is no single unique solution for the transliteration and the bi- (or multi-)uniqueness applies to the translation from

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Senator Clinton to xi1la1rui3/xi1la1li3/xi1la1li4 as well as its back translation from xi1la1rui3/xi1la1li3/xi1la1li4 to Senator Clinton. Looking from the opposite direction with Chinese words, 高雄 is the second largest city in Taiwan and most translators would have no problem to transliterate it as Kaohsiung. The same city was under the jurisdiction of 高雄州 previously under Japanese colonial rule, but using same transliteration for it will be a big mistake. 高雄州 should be Takao Prefecture. This is not unlike translating 京都 as Jingdu instead of Kyoto, but a bit more complicated. The place name at that time was indeed dãgao in Taiwanese (written as 打狗 ‘hit-dog’). The Japanese colonist did not like ‘vulgar’ ‘hit-dog’ name of the city hence transliterated according to Japanese kanji reading as 高雄, borrowing the name of a region near Kyoto. And the name dãgao was in terms borrowed from the aborigine Austronesian, though etymology can no longer be traced confidently. To add to the complexity, the two-syllable Takao in Japanese is typically used as a proper name, but can be transcribed into more than a dozen of different kanji/Chinese forms including 高雄: 高尾, 貴男, 貴雄, 隆男, 隆 雄, 隆夫, 高生, 孝男, 孝雄, 孝夫, 孝生, 孝朗, etc. In this section, we used two words, one from English and one from Chinese to show the non-uniqueness of transliteration, the simplest form of word-for-word translation. In sum, even literally verbatim word-for-word translation may not be a unique felicitous translation.

2.4 The Untranslatables One of the last challenges in our increasingly multi-lingual and multi-cultural world concerns the words that are not translatable. We will discuss two general scenarios and one particular example. The first general scenario involves words that are not lexicalized in the target language. For instance, Chinese simply does not have lexicalized concepts for English cooking words such as braise, blanche, or brown, just like there are many Chinese cooking words having no matching lexicalized terms in English. The solution is simply to paraphrase. The second general scenario involves code-mixing. When code-mixing happens, both the choice of code and the phonetic effects of the chosen words make crucial contribution to the meaning, be it Wakandan (in fact Xhosa) in Black Panther or Spanish in Terminator. In these contexts, translation would cause great loss of information. It is safe, though far from ideal, to leave these expressions untranslated in the original language if it is not in the source language. Hence, for instance, it is possible to leave the ‘hasta la vista’ part in Spanish for Terminator as long as Spanish is not the target language. However, what if both the source language and the mixed code are in writing systems that the reader does not understand? A good example is the popular use of 母湯/毋湯 in Taiwan Mandarin. It stands for Taiwanese m¯ thang (most likely {勿 + 要}當 or 毋當) ‘shouldn’t, shouldn’t have’. Translation as ‘mother soup’ or ‘don’t soup’ would be obvious faux-pas, and non-translation is not an option. But translation as ‘shouldn’t’, ‘shouldn’t have’ or even ‘no-no’

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loses the situational vividness of knowing Taiwanese is mixed in with Mandarin. An even more awkward challenge happens when the mixed code happens to be in the target language. When translating sentences like ‘Don’t worry, women you guanxi’, or (pointing at a picture of an alpaca) ‘This, is a caonima?’, neither sentences can be translated easily without paraphrasing. An emerging challenge to translation from Chinese involves the Mandarin Alphabetic Words (MAW, Ding et al. 2017; Huang and Liu 2017). MAWs are neologisms in Chinese that are written in Roman alphabets only or Roman alphabets mixed in with Chinese characters. The Roman alphabet parts are pronounced with a hybrid phonology between Chinese and English but without Chinese lexical tones. Their challenge to translation lies in the fact that they use Roman alphabets to represent Chinese concept. For instance, the following are four recently popular MAWs. (4) a. b. c. d.

PK/pk, either ‘penalty kick’ or ‘play to kill’ AA 制, ‘to share cost evenly; to go Dutch’ A 股, ‘A-share, the highest rated stock shares’ (很)Q, ‘pleasant mouth-feel; nice to chew on’

Take ‘pk/PK’, a word very popular with netizens and the younger population for example. It can be written in either all capital or all small letters. It is most likely borrowed from either English ‘penalty kick’ from soccer or ‘player kill/play to kill’ from video games. The earlier attested usages (in Sinica Corpus from the 1980s and earlier) are influenced by soccer, and the more recent surge in popularity in the past 5+ years is likely to be influenced by video/Internet games. Yet, these usages have the same, and Chinese specific, meaning of daring the addressee to have one final deciding match to settle dispute/rivalry. Either ‘penalty kick’ or ‘player kill’ would be a bad translation. But what would be the English word to translate it? In addition, there are MAWs that seem to simply duplicate English words and would seem to be trivial to translate but are not. For instance, IBM is IBM in Chinese. But how can we translate ‘联想的 IBM’ or in a similar context where IBM in fact stands for the (now) Lenovo PC products, but are called ‘IBM’ in Chinese? Most likely they cannot be left untranslated, yet translation leads to the seemingly absurd situation of translating ‘English’ to English (just like the translation of ‘pk’ above).

3 Translation Quality of Two Pairs of Near Synonyms We introduced in the last section four different sets of data to show that the belief that word-for-word translation (taken as the requirement of the Xin 信 dimension) is easily attainable is in fact a fallacy. Instead, we argue, following Y. R. Chao and paraphrasing Tytler (the purported source of Yan Fu), that 信 as felicity, measured by trustworthiness and information quality, is in fact the highest standard of good translation. In this section, we will further elaborate this point by two corpus-based studies of corresponding near synonym pairs in Chinese and English to demonstrate the complexity of capturing word meaning in full, especially in terms of power

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relation and usages in non-literal meanings and other meaning extensions. The idea is to use the near synonym pairs in each language to tease apart the most important semantic features needed to pinpoint lexical meaning differences, then to compare how the contrast between two near synonyms are comparable or incompatible in two languages to underline the challenges of lexical level concept-to-concept translational mapping. Below we take certain pairs of near synonyms—苦 and 痛 versus bitterness and pain, 鼓勵 and 勉勵 versus encourage and commend, as cases to demonstrate the importance of translation quality. The Sketch Engine—a corpus processing system developed in 2002 (Kilgarriff et al. 2004; Kilgarriff and Tugwell 2002)—and Chinese Word Sketch (CWS)—a language specific version of the Sketch Engine (Huang et al. 2005)—are used as the query systems. Comparable corpora are used to investigate the similarities and differences of near synonyms. The British National Corpus (2007) included in the Sketch Engine and the Chinese Gigaword Corpus (Huang 2009) embedded in CWS are adopted to search for near synonyms in English and Chinese, respectively.

3.1 苦 and 痛 Versus Bitterness and Pain 3.1.1

General Patterns

苦 and 痛 in Chinese Common Patterns between 苦 and 痛 Figures 1 and 2 show the Word Sketch and Sketch Difference results for ku3 and tong4 in the Chinese Gigaword Corpus provided by CWS. As shown in the subjects of the ku3 and tong 4 in Fig. 1 and the common patterns of the two words in Fig. 2, both 苦 ku3 ‘bitterness; bitter; bitterly’ and 痛 tong4 ‘pain; painful; painfully’ can be used to modify human beings (人 ren2), and some period of negative experience (時候 shi2hou ‘time’, 今天 jin1tian1 ‘today’). Looking further into some of the concordances in which ren2 (Figs. 3 and 4) or shi2hou (Figs. 5 and 6) is modified by ku3 or tong4 in the Chinese Gigaword Corpus, we can find that ku3 seems to refer more broadly to a hard experience, either physical or mental, which does not necessarily relate to a health problem (Figs. 4 and 6); tong4, however, mainly indicates a physical pain out of a health problem, or one’s sad emotion (Figs. 3 and 5). Only Patterns for 苦 and 痛 Respectively The subjects of tong4 shown in its only patterns in the Chinese Gigaword Corpus in CWS (Fig. 2) are human body parts. Only tong4 is typically used to describe a symptom, or a disease. Therefore, tong4 typically refers to a harsh tactile feeling due to health problems. On the other hand, it is only ku3, rather than tong 4, that is used to describe one’s work (gong1zuo4, huo2er).

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Fig. 1 Word Sketch results for ku3 and tong4 in the Chinese Gigaword Corpus in CWS

Fig. 2 Sketch Difference results for ku3/tong4 in the Chinese Gigaword Corpus in CWS

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Fig. 3 Concordances from the Chinese Gigaword Corpus in which ren2 is modified by tong4

Fig. 4 Concordances from the Chinese Gigaword Corpus in which ren2 is modified by ku3 (the first 10 lines)

Fig. 5 Concordances from the Chinese Gigaword Corpus in which shi2hou is modified by tong4

Bitterness/bitter and pain/painful in English The Sketch Difference results of bitterness versus pain (Fig. 7), and bitter versus painful (Fig. 8) in the British National Corpus (BNC) in the Sketch Engine are quite in accordance with the common and only patterns of 苦 ku3 and 痛 tong4 in the Chinese Gigaword Corpus in CWS. Like the common patterns of ku3 and tong 4 in

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Fig. 6 Concordances from the Chinese Gigaword Corpus in which shi2hou is modified by ku3

Fig. 7 Sketch Difference results of bitterness versus pain in the BNC corpus in the Sketch Engine

Chinese, bitter/bitterness of and painful/pain of in English can be commonly used to describe a negative experience in a specific past time period, such as experience and memory. In addition, bitter, bitterness in, and bitterness of in English are also used to modify a broader range of noun concepts, such as bitter voice, bitter tone, bitter word, bitterness in tone, and bitterness of debate, whereas painful, pain in, and

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Fig. 8 Sketch Difference results of bitter versus painful in the BNC corpus in the Sketch Engine

pain of are mostly confined to describe a harsh physical (typically tactile) pain due to health problems or a terrible mental feeling/experience.

3.1.2

Synaesthetic Metaphors of BITTERNESS and PAIN in Chinese and English and Their Translation

The above results of general patterns echo Xiong and Huang’s (2015) study into the synaesthetic metaphors of BITTERNESS and PAIN, in which great similarities have been found between Chinese and English. BITTERNESS and PAIN are sensory words, the former being gustatory, whereas the latter being tactile in its original sense, but they can form synaesthetic metaphors with cross-sensory domain mappings. As discussed in Sect. 3.1.1, while both BITTERNESS and PAIN can be used to describe negative experience in Chinese and English, in both languages the subjects of BITTERNESS are broader in scope than the subjects of PAIN and PAIN is mostly limited to refer to a harsh tactile feeling due to certain health problem or one’s sad emotion. Accordingly, Xiong and Huang’s (2015) exploration of the synaesthetic mappings of BITTERNESS and PAIN reveals that BITTERNESS is more versatile than PAIN in the range of source domains in both Chinese and English: the gustatory BITTERNESS can be mapped to the auditory-mental source (e.g. 苦言 ku3-yan2 ‘bitter words’ in Chinese and bitter words in English), and to the mental source (e.g. 痛苦的經歷 tong4ku3 de1 jing1li4 ‘bitter experience’ in Chinese and bitter experience in English), but the tactile PAIN can only be mapped to the mental source (e.g. 喪女之痛 sang4nv3 zhi1 tong4 ‘pain of losing one’s daughter’ in Chinese and pain of

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loneliness in English) in both languages. Meanwhile, the synaesthetic metaphors of BITTERNESS and PAIN basically inherit their negative experiential polarity rooted in their respective source domains (Xiong and Huang 2015). Despite the above similarities in the general scope of Chinese and English synaesthetic metaphors of BITTERNESS and PAIN, differences do exist in their synaesthetic mappings in terms of specific source domains (Xiong and Huang 2015), which brings great barriers for translating relevant expressions from one language to another. Ku3 in Chinese can be transferred to the olfactory domain to describe a kind of smell (e.g. 苦味 ku3wei4 ‘bitter-smell’), but this kind of gustatory to olfactory mapping is not attested in English, so it is hard to find an equivalent expression in English. Furthermore, BITTERNESS in English can be mapped to the tactile domain as in bitter blow, but there is no counterpart in Chinese (Xiong and Huang 2015). In such cases, it is impossible to achieve accurate word-for-word translation between Chinese and English.

3.1.3

Conceptual Metaphors of BITTERNESS and PAIN in Chinese and English and Their Translation

Besides the synaesthetic metaphor, the conceptual metaphors involving BITTERNESS and PAIN also vary noticeably in Chinese and English, and such variations need to be considered in doing translation. For example, Xiong and Huang (2015) have discovered an interesting phenomenon: EFFORT IS BITTERNESS in Chinese, but EFFORT IS PAIN in English. EFFORT IS BITTERNESS in Chinese As shown in the only pattern of ku3 and tong4 (Fig. 2), ku3, rather than tong4, can be used to describe one’s work (工作 gong1zuo4, 活兒 huo2er), and it means that the work requires hard efforts. An obvious tendency shown in the concordances of ku3 collocated with its subject gong1zuo4 (Fig. 9), or its modified huo2er (Fig. 10) is that people often enjoy (voluntarily) taking the hardness in their work and such an attitude is always encouraged as a very positive spirit to be upheld. Moreover, in the Word Sketch of ku3 (Fig. 1), its frequent collocation with the verb 吃 chi1 ‘eat, bite’ is also worth noting. As shown in Fig. 11, the sentences in

Fig. 9 Concordances from the Chinese Gigaword Corpus in which gong1zuo4 serves as the subject of ku3

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Fig. 10 Concordances from the Chinese Gigaword Corpus in which huo2er is modified by ku3

Fig. 11 Concordances from the Chinese Gigaword Corpus in which ku3 serves as the object of chi1

which ku3 serves as the object of chi1 all show that 吃苦 chi1ku3 ‘biting-bitterness; endure the hardships’ is a good performance which should be encouraged, and people often voluntarily make great efforts because the goal to achieve is highly important. As Xiong and Huang (2015: 19) interprets, EFFORT IS BITTERNESS is a typical conceptual metaphor in Chinese, in which ku3 is used to refer to efforts put forward by an agent. Although both ku3 and tong4 are experientially negative in polarity, the positive quality of ‘effort’ in the conceptual metaphor overwrites the negative polarity of ‘bitterness’ (Xiong and Huang 2015). EFFORT IS PAIN in English According to Xiong and Huang (2015), while EFFORT IS BITTERNESS is a typical conceptual metaphor in Chinese, EFFORT IS PAIN is found to be a conceptual metaphor in English. Examples in the BNC corpus such as no pain, no gain, shortterm pain for long-term gain, and short run pain for long-term gain accordingly

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show that pain denotes an effort which is the prerequisite for or the purpose of gain in English. There are also phrases like take pains to do something, go to pains to do something in English, which means trying hard to do something because one thinks it is important to do it (Collins COBUILD English Dictionary). We can tell from the following examples taken from the concordance lines in BNC that such phrases can be used in positive context—good results should turn out after making hard efforts. Just as bitterness in Chinese can encode efforts in a positive sense, in English the connotation of ‘effort’ as something recommendable and applaudable also renders the expressions of pain that embody this metaphor positive in polarity (Xiong and Huang 2015). Examples from BNC where pain is used to convey positive meaning are shown below: Emily took pains to make sure that details of operations were accurate. He had taken great pains to make it attractive. I reviewed Take a girl like you when it came out, and took pains to convey how much I enjoyed and admired its incendiariness. Herrick had taken great pains to make sure he was protected. However, composers often go to great pains to keep to true intervals. The Translation of Conceptual Metaphors of BITTERNESS and PAIN Effort is BITTERNESS in Chinese, but EFFORT is PAIN in English. In both languages, such metaphors have been found to bear a positive polarity in many instances. Therefore, to be faithful to the source language, direct word-to-word mapping does not work in the translation of such subtle expressions. The translators might need to switch the concept of BITTERNESS and PAIN for doing translation between the source and target language. In Chinese, it is ku3 instead of tong4 that refers to effort. Therefore, the Chinese expression 吃苦 chi-ku3 ‘biting-bitterness’ cannot be translated literally by word-to-word mapping into English; rather, take pains or go to pains might be better choices for its translation. Meanwhile, to express the meaning of the English saying no pain, no gain, we may say 不吃苦就不會有 收穫 bu4 chi1 ku3 jiu4 bu4 hui4 you3 shou1huo4, or 不能吃苦耐勞 就不能幹成大 事 bu4 neng4 chi1 ku3 nai4 lao2 jiu4 bu4 neng2 gan4 cheng2 da4 shi4 in Chinese. Nevertheless, it is hard to find an exactly equivalent Chinese saying. A similar one is ‘吃得苦中苦, 方為人上人 chi1 de2 ku3 zhong1 ku3 fang1 wei2 ren2 shang4 ren2 ‘one cannot achieve glory and wealth without having been through trials and tribulations’.

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3.2 鼓勵/勉勵 Versus Encourage/Commend 3.2.1

The Comparison of 鼓勵 and 勉勵 Used in Taiwan and Mainland China

While differences in the use of synaesthetic metaphor and conceptual metaphors in the Chinese and English contexts may cause difficulties for achieving high-quality XIN, the differences in the power distances and speech functions in the speech communities where the language is used are also issues that deserve our concern in translation. The Encoded Power Relations Wang and Huang’s (2018: 155) comparative study of 鼓勵 gu3li4 and 勉勵 mian3li4 used in Taiwan and Mainland China shows that ‘interpersonal power relation can be encoded lexically’. Based on the results from two subcorpora of the Chinese Gigaword Corpus in CWS—Gigaword_CNA (including news texts of 735,499,000 tokens from the Central News Agency of Taiwan), and Gigaword_XIN (including news texts of 382,881,000 tokens from the Xinhua News Agency of Beijing), it is found that ‘in comparison to Mainland China, gu3li4 is highly significantly underused, and mian3li4 is highly significantly overused in Taiwan’ (Wang and Huang 2018: 158). Such uneven distribution can be explained by the different extent of power relation constrains for the use of mian3li4 in the two speech communities. As indicated in the Sketch Difference results of gu3li4 (Fig. 13) and mian3li4 (Fig. 12) in Gigaword_CNA (CNA) and Gigaword_XIN (XIN), in comparison with gu3li4 which does not necessarily indicate a hierarchical power relation between the agent and patient, mian3li4 used in Mainland and Taiwan both encodes a certain level of

Fig. 12 A comparison of the only patterns of mian3li4 in CNA and XIN in CWS

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Fig. 13 A comparison of the ‘only patterns’ of gu3li4 in CNA and XIN in CWS

hierarchical relation between the two roles (Wang and Huang 2018). Comparing the usage of mian3li4 cross-strait, however, the study (Wang and Huang 2018) further shows that mian3li4 in Mainland usage represents a specific stance that involves a higher hierarchical relation requiring the agent to be the direct governing authority of the patient. On the contrary, the Taiwan usage takes a relatively more neutral stance so it has less power relation constraint and can be used more freely. As shown in the Sketch Difference results of mian3li4 (Fig. 12) in CNA and XIN, mian3li4 in CNA allows wider ranges for subjects and objects. The subjects for mian3li4 in its only pattern in XIN are merely individual political leaders such as Jiang Zemin, but in CNA typical subjects include not only political leaders but also agents of other categories, such as the Nobel Prize winner Li3 Yuan3zhe2, the generic reference of a group of people 大家 da4jia1 ‘all of us’ and the self-reference 自我 zi4wo3 ‘oneself; ourselves’ (see Fig. 12). The typical objects of mian3li4 allowed in the Taiwan usage are also wider in range, including students and players (學妹 xue2mei4 ‘school girl of a lower grade’, 隊員 dui4yuan2 ‘player’) other than the objects of people in military or political sense (人民 ren2min2 ‘people’, 官兵 guan1bing1 ‘military officers and soldiers’, 同志 tong2zhi4 ‘comrades’, etc.) used in the Mainland (see Fig. 12).

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Table 1 Log-likelihood values for the collocation of gu3li4/mian3li4 with modal verbs in CNA and XIN (updated from Wang and Huang 2018: 163 with a few errors fixed) Word

Freq. in CNA

Freq. in XIN

應該 鼓勵

523

159

應該 勉勵

11

0

應當 鼓勵

32

62

應當 勉勵

Log-likelihood

Sig.

69.84

0.000

***

+

29.28

0.000

***

–

137.95

0.000

***

+

+

0

1

應 鼓勵

720

182

–

應 勉勵

15

0

要 鼓勵

413

551

139.46

0.000

***

–

要 勉勵

29

6

7.47

0.006

**

+

+

Note: * p