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A Contrastive Study of the Translation of Nominal Concept in Taoism

Author: LiDaWei
Tutor: LiWenZhong
School: Henan Normal
Course: Foreign Linguistics and Applied Linguistics
Keywords: Tao Te Ching Parallel Corpus Nouns Translation feature
CLC: H059
Type: Master's thesis
Year: 2011
Downloads: 126
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Abstract

Tao Te Ching, as the Taoist classic, has an enormous influence at home and abroad. More than 100 different versions of English translations of the 5,000 word article have been published in both the western countries and China for the past over 110 years. As these versions are produced in different times by different translators, a lot of language phenomena and various translation strategies are adopted. So far, many studies focus on issues such as the subjectivity of translators or translation strategies, few articles make a thorough study the causes of emergence of so many versions.Parallel texts and comparative analysis of different versions base on parallel corpus which is the new trend in corpus linguistic development in recent years. Its significance lies in that it values language facts and the internal relevance between parallel texts and different versions. Translators realize understanding and transformation of source text through translation practice, which is theoretically principle of parallel text analysis, but a single translation by one translator is just personal activity, far from the basis for bilingual counterparts. Establishment of corresponding conception and terms of bilingual parallel texts is a complex process of interaction and negotiation within translators, in which the generally accepted translation is more translators and repeated continually; while the less accepted translation gradually fade out owing to negative response of other translators. More likely the translation is accepted by readers and translators, the frequently it appears in the parallel corpus, vice versa. Parallel corpus is a huge resource base, which is composed of translation works and strategies of numerous translators and which forms the basis of unit-based translation research. Compared with character of word-based dictionary, this kind of unit-based database should have a stronger sense of reciprocity and translation guidance, providing a rich knowledge base of reference for computer which does not have the intuitive sense of language and translation.This study focuses on the translation features of various translations of Tao Te Ching. In order to ensure the accuracy of research, this study chooses 40 versions by Westerners directly from Chinese Tao Te Ching. Besides, parallel corpus technique combining qualitative and quantitative research methods are adopted to analyse the high frequency nouns in Tao Te Ching, the main research questions are as follows: (1) What are the high-frequency nouns in Tao Te Ching?(2) What is the equivalent translation of these high-frequency nouns?(3) In what aspects, the translational characteristics of these high-frequency nouns in Tao Te Ching manifest divergence and consistency?(4) What causes these translational characteristics?The research procedures are as follows:(1). Parallel corpora are established corresponding to Chinese-English translation of Tao Te Ching.Firstly, parallel texts materials are collected and arranged with internet. Secondly, corresponding unit identification system is set up. Based on a collection of forty English versions of Tao Te Ching, using the same Chinese text; a Chinese-English bilingual database is established. Since it is a correspondence between ancient Chinese and English, the principle requires sentence correspondence, the correspondence should be carried out according to the disjunctive sentences in the Chinese version of Tao Te Ching, in the analysis of some long sentences.(2). The choice of norminal concept is based on the Chinese Tao Te Ching context. High-frequency nouns in Tao Te Ching are eventually decided with perusal and retrieval of WORD. The first step is to be acquainted with Tao Te Ching in Chinese, followed by finding out all the nouns in it. In the last step, frequency of these words are fixed and the top five high-frequency words ,“道”“德”“无为”“一”and“万物”are ascertained as object of study.(3). The statistics and retrieval of parallel corpus can be divided into two parts: 1) corresponding unit retrieval and basic information statistics. 2) the whole text retrieval and index analysis (李文中,2010,p.25). With the retrieval function of parallel corpus, the study got correlative data of high-frequency nouns translated in the different versions.(4). Apply the correlative data to the relative research.Meanwhile, the author of the present thesis believes that the combination of parallel corpus and translation is of considerable significance to the translation of classic. Works difficult to complete in conventional ways can be achieved in corpus conditions and the credibility of research increases with plenty of studying materials. As corpus is widely accepted, more and more scholars begin to adopt the parallel-corpus-based research method to study translation. The present study made tentative attempts for the parallel contrastive analysis, providing an active reference for future research.

A Contrastive Study of the Translation of Nominal Concept in Taoism

Abstract

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