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UM E-Theses Collection (澳門大學電子學位論文庫)

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Title

Investigating hybridity in translated Chinese with a corpus analytical framework

English Abstract

Translated language is commonly agreed to be different from non-translated language. One focus of Translation Studies is concerned with the objective and scientific description of those linguistic features that account for this difference. Corpus Translation Studies (CTS), which combines Descriptive Translation Studies (DTS) and Corpus Linguistics (CL), offers a powerful approach to the description of translated language. The present research employs a corpus analysis framework and considers translations from English to Chinese. It focuses on features of hybridity which combine characteristics both from the source language and target language. Hybridity is the result of translation processes, including positive authorial and translatorial decisions. The characteristics of “Europeanized /Anglicised Chinese” and “Translationese” appear at all linguistic levels in the Chinese texts translated from English. Using parallel and comparable corpora as an evidence base, the present research investigates the characteristics of hybridity in Chinese texts that have been translated from English in different language levels and different genres of English. The inventory of hybridity features explored in the research includes multilevel linguistic phenomena: word-formation features (such as suffixes), morphological increase in translated Chinese, ‘DV’ constructions (‘D’ means Chinese ‘attributive’, ‘V’ means ‘verb’, with N + de + V, N + V as case studies), classifier constructions, light verbs vii (with ‘jìnxíng’ 进 行 proceed as a case study), ‘SHI’ structure (including the ‘SHI…DE’ structure), nominalization, and cohesive features in translated Chinese. The exploration of corpus data suggests that the combination of the “source language shining through” effect and the normalization of the target Chinese endows translated Chinese texts with hybrid features which distinguish them from non-translated Chinese texts. The thesis also draws upon diachronic comparable corpora to explore the potential impact of translation and hybridity on written Chinese over the past 70 years. The investigation suggests that English-Chinese translations have introduced more and more hybrid structures into Chinese. The distinctive hybrid features of translated language and their tendencies can help us with understanding the language change and development, and it can also throw new light on the translation process and help to identify translation norms. The analysis of hybrid linguistic features in translated Chinese prompts us to re-evaluate TU (translation universal) hypotheses proposed by Baker (1993) and investigated by Baker and others (Baker, 1995, 1996; Laviosa, 1998a, 2000; etc.).

Issue date

2015.

Author

Dai, Guang Rong

Faculty
Faculty of Arts and Humanities (former name: Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities)
Department
Department of English
Degree

Ph.D.

Subject

Chinese language -- Translating into English

Corpora (Linguistics)

Language and culture

Supervisor

Corbett John

Files In This Item

Full-text (Intranet only)

Location
1/F Zone C
Library URL
991008661179706306