Chapter One Introduction
1.1 Research Background
Prose is one valuable literary genre along with poetry, novel and drama. Modern Chinese prose was born in the literary revolution in 1917, and developed rapidly since the May 4th Movement. In the May 4th Movement, modern vernacular Chinese replaced classical Chinese. This marked the completion of the transition from traditional culture to modern culture. Modern Chinese prose is characterized by being flexible in writing form but compact in meaning. It is an important cultural carrier, reflecting profound Chinese culture and spirit. Thus, the translation of Chinese prose is a good medium to spread Chinese culture. However, compared with poetry and novel, prose has not been paid much attention in the field of literary translation. The study of prose translation seems to be left far behind.
Translation is the mutual transformation of the meaning of texts between different cultures and languages. Its essence is to exchange the content or information contained in one language with another language. Translators may face difficulties when translating Chinese prose because it usually contains a meaning beyond the mere words which is the central idea of the text. Thus, analyzing how information is transmitted in the text is beneficial for translators to grasp the main idea and compose translations more effectively.
Thematic progression theory is just a theory about how information is transmitted and converted in a text. The thematic progression theory was put forward by Danes in 1974. Based on Halliday’s Theme-Rheme theory, Danes first raised the notion of “thematic progression” which is concerning how the theme and rheme of each clause are relating to each other to form continuous information flow in a text. (Danes,1974) TP patterns can interpret texts from the perspective of three semantic meta-functions: conceptual function, interpersonal function, and discourse function. That is to say, a text can be explained and analyzed from topics, time and space, as well as individual estimates and logical relationship between sentences.
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1.2 Purpose and Significance of this Research
This study explores the translation of Chinese prose from the perspective of TP patterns. Translation of Chinese proses have started attracting scholars’ attention since the 1980s. Early researches were carried out by famous translators such as Wang Zuoliang and Zhang Peiji. They put forward some translation strategies based on their translation practice. Many scholars followed their step and summarized translation strategies by analyzing excellent translation works. With the introduction of western linguistic and translation theories, further studies on prose translation were carried out from more aspects. They were conducted from the perspective of literary criticism, literary style, and linguistic phenomenons in certain translation works. And one common feature shared by most studies is that they focus on the translation of certain types of word and sentences, but seldom on the deconstruction and construction of textual structures in translation.
Although extensive studies have been done in the field of prose translation, little attention has been paid to the textual level. This study aims to fill this gap by analyzing the thematic patterns of the selected proses and their translations.
The significance of the current study can be summarized as follows:
Theoretically speaking, this study explores the thematic patterns in Chinese proses and their translation versions. The results and findings have the potential to make contribution to the development of prose translation. It could offer great insights into the issue under discussion and provide a new research perspective for further researchers.
Practically speaking, this study provides constructive translation strategies from the perspective of TP patterns. A translator can better understand the organization of a text, comprehend the writing purpose of the author as well as predict the developing direction of it. Then, based on proper and full understanding of the original text, the translator can produce high-quality translation. This study is also of guidance values for English teaching. As the major findings shown, there do exist differences in TP patterns between Chinese and English. Therefore, teachers should teach students how to get clear information structure by analyzing TP patterns and proper translation methods when dealing with TP patterns. What’s more, it is also constructive for reading comprehension. Based on the major findings, teachers can teach students some skills to analyze the TP patterns of Chinese argumentative, so that they can have a better comprehension of the text and the writer’s writing intentions.
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Chapter Two Literature Review
2.1 Previous studies on Translation of Prose at Home and Abroad
The first paper about translation of prose in China was written by Wang Zuoliang in 1983. In his article, he discussed how to deal with metaphor in proses. Since then, studies on prose translation have attracted more attention at home and abroad and the achievements are fruitful. They can be classified into three aspects according to their contents: studies on translation strategies under the guidance of certain theories; studies on the translation style of certain famous prose translators; comparative studies on different translated version of one prose. This section reviews the previous studies on translation of prose from the three perspectives mentioned above.
2.1.1 Studies on Translation Strategies
Many scholars summarize translation strategies from their own translation practice or by analyzing works of famous translators. Belloc H (1931) puts forward six principles for prose (including fiction) translation in general in his monograph On Translation, which also sheds some light to modern Chinese prose translating into English. He emphasizes that the translator should regard the source text as a whole and not entangle in the words. He also proposes that the translator has enough rights to do some adjustments and transformations to create a target text that conforms to the idiomatic expression norms of the target language (Belloc H, 1931). Tang Yaocai (2001) studies the cross-sentence translation strategy by analyzing Zhang Peiji’s prose translation, finding that the cross-sentence translation strategy is frequently used in Zhang Peiji’s work. What’s more, compound sentence, adverbial clause of time and non-restrictive attributive clause are the most commonly used sentence structure in his translations (Tang Yaocai, 2001). Yu Dong and Liu Shicong (2014) focus on the rhythm, which was paid less attention to compared with meaning and style in prose translation. They point out that rhythm serves to strengthen the author’s emotion and convey the thematic thoughts. They also give suggestions on how to keep the beauty of rhyme when translating (Yu Dong & Liu Shicong, 2014). Xia Tingde and Ma.
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2.2 Previous Studies on TP patterns at Home and Abroad
Thematic Progression (TP) reflects how a theme of a clause is connected to the rheme or theme of the previous clause. It is an important method to analyze textual structure and coherence.
2.2.1 Studies on TP Patterns Abroad
The notion of thematic progression is first put forward by Frantisek Danes from the aspect of discourse analysis. Danes suggests that thematic progression refers to the selection and arrangement of themes and rhemes, the inter-relations and the relations between theme and rheme in the preceding clause (Danes, 1974). From his explanation, it is clear that the primary subject in studies of thematic progression is the whole text rather than clause, because the thematic progression can reflect the framework of the total textual structure. Danes divides TP patterns into three basic groups after plenty of studies on articles written in Czech language. They are the simple linear TP, TP with a constant theme and TP with a derived theme.
The three TP patterns are discussed in detail here.
1) Simple linear TP
In this pattern, the rheme of the previous clause is taken as the theme of the next clause. In other words, the theme is the same as the rheme in the previous clause. It can be illustrated as follows: (T represents the theme and R represents the rheme)
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Chapter Three Theoretical Framework .................................. 16
3.1 Theme and Rheme ........................ 16
3.1.1 Simple Theme .............................. 16
3.1.2 Multiple Theme ........................ 17
Chapter Four Research Methodology ............................. 25
4.1 Research Questions ................................ 25
4.2 Data Collection ........................... 25
4.3 Research Procedure .............................. 26
Chapter Five Results and Discussion ............................... 27
5.1 Contrastive analysis of Chinese Argumentative Proses and Translations .. 27
5.1.1 Distinctive Features of TP Pattern of Chinese Argumentative Proses ..................... 27
5.1.2 Distinctive Features of TP Pattern of Corresponding Translated Versions .............. 28
Chapter Five Results and Discussion
5.1 Contrastive analysis of Chinese Argumentative Proses and Translations
In this section, the types and frequencies of TP patterns used in Chinese argumentative proses and their translation works will be presented to explore the distinctive features of TP patterns of Chinese argumentative proses and corresponding translated versions. A contrastive analysis will be given to find out the similarities and differences of TP patterns between Chinese argumentative proses and their translated versions.
5.1.1 Distinctive Features of TP Pattern of Chinese Argumentative Proses
The Chinese argumentative proses are chosen from the original text used as competition materials in Han Suyin International Translation Competition. They contain totally 69 paragraphs, including 421 clauses. This study takes clause as researching unit. The first sentence of each paragraph and those paragraphs with only one sentence which cannot form TP patterns are excluded from coding and statistics. And in split and combined patterns, several clauses form only one pattern. Due to the facts above, the chosen proses form 338 TP patterns in total. The types and frequencies of TP patterns in each prose is shown in Table 5.1.
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Chapter Six Conclusion
6.1 Major Findings
This study analyzes the TP patterns of Chinese argumentative proses and their corresponding translations. The quantitative analysis of the frequencies and types of the TP patterns used in Chinese argumentative proses shows that irregular pattern and parallel pattern is most commonly used in Chinese argumentative proses. They take nearly half of the original patterns. Besides them, concentrated pattern and linear pattern is used frequently in Chinese argumentative proses. As for the TP patterns used in translations, they are different with that of the original texts. In the English version linear pattern, which only ranks the fourth in the original texts, is the most commonly used pattern, taking 25% of the total. An obvious increase in the amount of concentrated patterns is also witnessed in translated versions. Parallel patterns and irregular patterns are applied less frequently in English versions than the original ones. Besides the differences discussed above, Chinese argumentative proses and their translations also share something in common. It lies in the use of crossing pattern, combined pattern and split pattern. They are seldom used in both Chinese and English texts. What’s more, the rank of frequencies of these three types also remains the same in both categories.
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