A Contrastive Study On Titles Of Chinese And International Academic Journal Articles

This thesis reports a contrastive study of the English titles of academic journal articles, the Chinese titles of academic journal articles and their translated English versions, focusing on the differences and similarities among them.The study is based on the data collected from 1,500 academic journal articles from 23 international leading journals and 20 leading Chinese journals, covering 12 sub-disciplines of engineering, science and humanities and social science. An analytical framework is established after a summary of the previous studies on titles of academic journal articles. Within the analytical framework and based on the data collected, three groups of titles are examined to address the following two questions:(1) What differences and similarities are there among English titles of academic journal articles, Chinese titles of academic journal articles and their translated English versions in terms of length, structural construction, use of punctuation and high-frequency words? To what extent do they differ from each other?(2) What are the possible reasons for the similarities and differences among English titles of academic journal articles, Chinese titles of academic journal articles and their translated English versions?The results show differences as well as similarities among the three groups of titles. First, the most preferred titles for both Chinese and international scholars are the nominal phrase titles. The average number of words in translated English versions from Chinese titles is similar to that of English ones. This shows that scholars both at home and abroad follow the tradition of academic speech community. However, English titles designed by international scholars tend to be more diverse than those by Chinese scholars in structural construction. Although Chinese writers employ some unnecessary words when translating their Chinese titles into English ones, they are trying to make their translated titles in line with their international counterparts in terms of title length and use of punctuation.The study will contribute to the study of the titles in Chinese and international academic journal articles and is in hope of helping Chinese writers follow the international tradition of designing titles when they design English titles or when they translate the Chinese titles into English ones. However, there are some limitations concerning the amount of data, disciplines and genres and further studies are thus encouraged.