Empirical Translation Studies - Interdisciplinary Methodologies Explored - Meng Ji
4. Normalization in translating personal collocations: A corpus study of Chinese translations of Ulysses
Empirical Translation Studies - Interdisciplinary Methodologies Explored - Meng Ji
Defeng Li [+]
University of London
Wang Qing [+]
Yuanjian He [+]
University of Macau
Description
This study explores the Chinese translation of James Joyce’s personal collocations in Ulysses. Our primary research question is whether the author’s novelty in word collocation is “normalized” by the translator into commonplace phraseology. The methodology adopted is a corpus-based translation study, with a paralel corpus consisting of the source text of Ulysses and its Chinese transtion by Qian Xiao, and a comparable corpus of the translator’s own creative writings in Chinese. The comparison of the translation with the source text shows that Joyce’s creative phraseology is normalized by the translator. A further examination of personal collocations in Xiao’s Chinese creative writings reveals that he is versed in creating stylistic effects by using his own personal collocations. We expound on three possible factors for such a divergence: different roles the translator/writer assumed for himself, the importance he attached to the authorial style , and the different linguistic features displayed by the source and target language.