Fathoming Translation as Discursive Experience: Theorization and Application

With his positive approach to translation studies featured in this highly original volume, Chunshen Zhu brings into perspective from the vantage point of translation the workings of human factors in text production, interpretation, and dissemination in and through translation in varying social situations. This book examines a variety of key issues heatedly debated or largely neglected in the field of translation studies and beyond – for example, meaning making, nature of the unit of translation, augmentation of transitivity by modification, signification of repetition, and cognitive effects of syntactic iconicity – by critically engaging insights from functional linguistics and philosophy of language, among other fields of study. These issue-driven, phenomenon-focused, and theorization-oriented studies, presented in eight chapters with ample exemplification and case studies, form a coherent whole to bring a network of correlations between theory and practice, linguistics and literature, form and content, information structure and communicative function, intention and effect, and textuality and experience to bear upon the study of translation, fathoming its depths not only as a linguistic operation but more significantly as a textually accountable process of intersubjective and cross-lingual sign making that facilitates humans’ understanding of themselves and of the world. The book is therefore a useful reference for scholars, teachers, and postgraduate and research students who are interested in a comprehensive yet focused approach to translation as an academic subject straddling linguistics and literary, cultural, and social studies. It will also be useful for those who would like to observe bilingualism and cross-cultural communication through translation in general and translation involving the Chinese language in particular.

Table of Contents:
Table of Contents Acknowledgements Chapter One Introduction: Towards a positive study of translation 3+1 childhood diseases ‘Theory’ ‘Theories’ or ‘turns’ Relativity of validity Bourdieu’s language theory revisited Insights from Friedman and Iser 1.6.1 Friedman’s (1953) characterization of positive economics outlined 1.6.2 Iser’s (2006) conceptual framework of critical theory outlined Positive translation studies Between theory and practice: Theorization and application About this book Chapter Two Structure of Meaning (SOM): Making of meaning and Triggering of discursive experience 2.1 Preamble 2.2 Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL): Translation as text re-creation 2.3 Speech acts: Intentionality in translation 2.4 Structure of Meaning: An integrated three-dimensional model of meaning making 2.4.1 The compositional dimension 2.4.2 The interactional dimension 2.4.3 The experiential dimension 2.5 Relationships between the dimensions of SOM 2.5.1 Dimensions of SOM: A generic view 2.5.2 SOM: Form and substance 2.6 Translation: A discursive experience in three dimensions 2.7 Summary Chapter Three From structure to experience: Meaning making in translation 3.1 Preamble 3.2 What we have understood about translation: A brief overview 3.3 Sense, meaning, and meaning making 3.4 Dynamics of meaning making: Ingarden’s conception of ‘moments’ 3.5 Reading and experiencing: A tryout 3.6 Experiment with focus management in translation 3.6.1 A linguistics text in translation 3.6.2 The opening sentence of The Old Man and the Sea in Chinese translation 3.6.3 A linguistics text in translation re-examined: Management of information focus 3.7 Discussion and conclusion Chapter Four The Sentence as Unit of Translation (UT): From function to experience 4.1 Preamble 4.2 Between text and sentence: UT redefined 4.3 Case study one: Within and beyond a sentence 4.4 Case study two: From sentence to text 4.4.1 Textual integrity of sentences in the source text 4.4.2 A translation experiment from the perspective of textual integrity 4.5 Discussion and conclusion Chapter Five Augmentation of transitivity: Modification and attention management in translation 5.1 Att- and adv-modification: A preliminary framework 5.2 Modification: To indicate, to describe, or to define 5.3 Comparability between att- and adv-modification in attention management 5.4 Modification: Information distribution and attention management 5.5. From external to internal modification: Looking into a word 5.5.1 Meaning structured in a word 5.5.2 Internal modifiers: Morphemic and sememic 5.6. From morphemic to sememic modification: Looking into a morpheme 5.6.1 Word meaning development and its implications for translation 5.6.2 ‘Skewed’ correspondence and its implications for translation 5.7 False and pseudo morphemic modifiers 5.7.1 False morphemic modifiers 5.7.2 Pseudo morphemic modifiers 5.8 Attention management and manipulation through modification: Three case examples 5.8.1 Angry Birds, Twelve Angry Men, etc. 5.8.2 The Wife 5.8.3《鋼的琴》‘steel deatt qin’ 5.9 Summary Chapter Six Touching base with text: Repetition and signification in translation 6.1 Preamble 6.2 What kind of linguistics? 6.3 Why (not) literary texts and literary translation? 6.4 Leitmotif as VTU in literary translation: The mapping of a textual network 6.5 Operation of leitmotif as VTU: Case examples 6.5.1 From Chinese translations of John Galsworthy’s The Apple Tree 6.5.2 From Chinese translations of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby 6.6 Discussion: Textual network, effect, and apurposiveness of literary translating 6.6.1 Accountability for the network of signification: Leitmotif as VTU 6.6.2 The apurposiveness of artistic creation: From illocutionary to perlocutionary 6.7 Conclusion Chapter Seven Language in action: Syntactic iconicity and translation 7.1 Of arbitrariness and iconicity: From language to text 7.2 Syntactic iconicity: Form, function, effect 7.3 Iconicity as ‘foreignization’ in creative writing: Wang Meng’s ‘The Eye of Night’ 7.3.1 Case One: Iconicity of short sentences 7.3.2 Case Two: Iconicity in a long sentence 7.4 Iconic in translation: To be, or not to be 7.5 Conclusion Chapter Eight Deceptive language and conflict of experience: Text (re)production and dissemination through translation 8.1 Situation, culture and text (re)production 8.1.1 Relating skill to situation 8.1.2 Culture: Its behavioural dimension of tool making 8.1.3 From tool making to sign making 8.1.4 Text as sign 8.1.5 Cultural awareness in text (re)production and dissemination 8.2 Text (re)production and dissemination: A case study 8.2.1 The historical situation of the source text production 8.2.2 A present-day situation of translation 8.3 Critique and discussion 8.3.1 The translation as a primary sign 8.3.2 The translation as a secondary sign 8.4 Conclusion Index