Appraisal Theory And Translators’ Manipulation In Translations

With the cultural turn of translation studies, scholars have turned their focus of study from the micro-linguistic level to the macro-cultural level. Manipulation, especially in literary translation studies, is frequently investigated on the macro-level, mostly descriptive-analysis-oriented and focusing on the external factors like power, ideology, patronage and poetics. However, with the deepening of this macro-cultural study, more and more scholars are calling for a return of the orientation in translation studies, to study translation by addressing more specific issues in texts and language. It is under this circumstance that research leading to this thesis is conducted:quantitatively study the degree of manipulation in literary translation from a micro-linguistic level.The author takes as data of research the Ah Q Zheng Zhuan by Lu Xun, his first story ever translated, and its three English versions translated respectively by Yang Hsien-yi & Gladys Yang, William A. Lyell, and Julia Lovell. The thesis attempts to analyze the degree of manipulation based on the linguistic appraisal theory from the perspective of its three sub-systems, namely, attitude, engagement and graduation. Both distribution and realization of attitude, engagement and graduation in the source text and its three target texts are analyzed for statistical comparison. The comparison indicates that Lovell’s version exhibits the largest proportion of manipulation for conveying appraisal resources, Lyell’s version shows much less, while the Yangs’version reveals the least degree of translation manipulation in this regard.Besides the statistical and comparative analysis on the degree of manipulation in both source and target texts of Ah Q Zheng Zhuan, this thesis also attempts to give an account of the mechanism for manipulating attitude, engagement and graduation respectively. The underlying reasons that may account for the different degrees of manipulation are explored from the perspective of translators’purpose and emphasis on target readers, translation distance as well as translator-centeredness.The present study indicates that manipulation indeed exists in both the source and target texts of Ah Q Zheng Zhuan to some degree, and that quantitatively analyzing the manipulation from the micro-linguistic level serves to complement and enhance the macro-cultural level of translation studies.