A Corpus-based Study Of Normalization In English-Chinese Translated Fiction: A Diachronic Perspective

The dissertation is a corpus-based diachronic research on the phenomenon of normalization in English-Chinese fictional translation. In the field of corpus-based translation studies, normalization has been proposed as a universal feature of translation, however, the notion of "universals" is debatable since translation as a social communicative act will be unavoidably affected by contextual factors in different cultures and historical periods. Therefore, a diachronic study of normalization could shed light on the nature of the notion as well as the nature of translation behaviors. The primary objective of the present research is to systematically explore the variation of normalization across times, and to highlight the social significance of translation activities by contextualizing the research results. Such work is based on the following assumptions:1) Normalization generally refers to the tendency of translators to conform to the conventionally established and standard practices typical of the target language, which would in turn result in a relatively higher conservativeness and repetitiveness, and a lower diversity of language use in translations;2) Normalization is a relative notion, a norm-induced feature that is subject to changes in socio-cultural and historical contexts. Normalization (or de-normalization) is manifest in repeatedly observed patterns in the linguistic make-up of translations as products, and could be discerned using corpus-analysis tools.The construction of a diachronic corpus is where the whole empirical research begins (Chapter Three). The corpus consists of a parallel part (DPCECF) and monolingual comparable part (the corresponding non-translated Chinese texts). DPCECF contains extracts of 14 English source texts with two sets of translations from two time spans: 1930s-40s and the last 20 years. A corpus-based research model is developed for the diachronic study of normalization in translation and a multi-level investigation is conducted on different linguistic levels (Chapter Four to Six).Investigation of normalization on the lexical level uses measures like POS distribution, high-frequency words, word-length, and compositionality of five quasi-affixes. The findings reveal a general tendency toward normalization as regards the general POS distribution of the two translated subcorpora. The translated and non-translated texts differ most evidently in the use of nouns and pronouns. While the lower use of nouns in translations most probably reflects the "conventionalization" tendency in the translation process, the redundant use of pronouns should be due to a major influence from the source English language. Analysis of high-frequency words reveals a stronger conservativeness in TCT1 (translations of 1930s and 1940s) than TCT2 (translations of the last 20 years). TCT1 shows a heavier use of mono-syllabic words, whereas a stronger polysyllabic tendency could be found in TCT2. Study of the compositionality of five quasi-affixes shows a higher degree of translation normalization on the morphological level in TCT2, whereas TCT1 seem to display a stronger influence from the source text language. In sum, analysis on the lexical level finds a mixture of normalization and de-normalization tendencies in the translated subcorpora of different periods.Collocation analyses have found a slightly higher number of collocates in relation to certain node words as well as a lower repetition rate of the "a (的/底) n" lexical patterns in TCT1 in comparison with OCT1 (earlier non-translations). Similarly, parallel concordance data further reveal more frequent de-normalized collocations in TCT1 than in TCT2, displaying a stronger preference for direct translation in TCT1. TCT2 tends to make the original collocations explicit or structurally adapted to typical Chinese usages. Overall, the findings seem to indicate a heavier influence from the source language and a weaker normalization tendency in TCT1 in comparison with TCT2.Analyses on the syntactic level mainly use three dimensions:hypotacticalization of translated Chinese, use of passive constructions, and sentence/sentence segment length. Generally speaking, the syntactic features show more influence from the source language than features on other levels, and earlier translations seem to display a stronger deviance from the normal features of their comparable non-translations. Specifically, as regards the hypotactic features of translated texts, both translated collections seem to show a higher frequency of connectives and prepositions than their comparable counterparts, indicating a stronger hypotactic tendency in translational Chinese. A diachronic analysis shows a stronger hypotactic tendency in TCT1 than in TCT2, as reflected either in the significantly higher frequency of connectives and prepositions in TCT1, or in the lower overlapping rate of word forms between earlier translated and native texts.There is a relative overuse of passive constructions in TCT1 than in the comparable non-translations, whereas TCT2 shows a slight underuse of passives as compared with their counterparts, suggesting a stronger normalization tendency in TCT2. Both TCT1 and TCT2 show a'deviation'from the normal length of Chinese passive constructions, as reflected by a lower frequency percentage of long passives than short passives under the source text influence in the translation process. Within long passives, TCT1 contains a higher proportion of agents over 3 words in length than OCT1 as well as TCT2, exhibiting a stronger influence from English. With respect to semantic prosody, TCT1 and TCT2 tend to be normalized with a major proportion of negative passives in the total cases. The greater length of sentences(S) and sentence segments (SS) suggests a de-normalized feature in translated texts of both periods, and diachronically speaking, this tendency seems stronger in TCT1 with significantly higher S and SS lengths than the corresponding earlier non-translations, and similar mean S and SS lengths to their counterparts in the English source texts. Frequent use of premodifiers is found to be a major factor that contributes to the increase in S length, and further analysis shows a heavier use of long attributives in TCT1 than in TCT2, indicating a stronger influence from the source language on TCT1. Furthermore, the significantly higher number of head verbs and head adjectives in TCT1 than in OCT1 suggests a preference of TCT1 for direct translation of the source text action nouns and descriptive nouns.The empirical research results indicate that hybridity is a common feature in translations of different time spans, and several socio-cultural factors are found crucial in bringing about the different degrees of normalization in translations of different time spans. Generally speaking, change of power relations between source and target languages and cultures leads to the changes in language attitude and views on translation strategies. The gradual development of vernacular Chinese and translation theory, together with the growing linguistic confidence in late 20th century, has made the incorporation of Europeanized language elements more rational.In "Conclusion", the major findings of the entire study are summarized, and the theoretical and methodological implications of these findings are presented. The major findings are as follows:1) Translations of different periods show both commonalities and diversity in the linguistic manifestations of normalization. For most dimensions examined, a stronger normalization tendency could be discerned in translations of recent 20 years than those of 1930s-40s.2) Co-existence of normalization and de-normalization are found in translations of both periods, showing the hybrid nature of translated texts.3) The syntactic features in both translated subcorpora have undergone greater influence from the source language than features on other levels have.4) A Europeanization tendency could be discerned in non-translated Chinese, mainly as result of source language influence in the process of indirect language contact. In sum, the findings confirm our hypotheses that normalization is a relative notion, a norm-induced feature that is subject to changes in socio-cultural and historical context. Change in normalization tendency reflects the social nature of translational behavior.The present research contributes theoretically and methodologically to the fields of translation studies. Theoretically, the study yields insight into the nature of normalization not only with theoretical discussions concerning its definition, its relation with de-normalization, and its norm-induced nature, but, more importantly, with empirical studies on different linguistic levels. This, in turn, will help to unveil the social nature of translation behaviors. Methodologically, the present study proposes a model for the study of normalization in translation, which integrates the synchronic and diachronic perspectives, and combines mono-lingual comparable and bilingual parallel corpus resources. Thus, it expands the research methods for the study of translational language. In addition, the present study helps to offer new insight into the complex, reciprocal relationships between the source language, translational Chinese, and non-translated native Chinese, which has important implications for the study of Chinese language variation. As with all corpus-based research, this research suffers from a number of limitations in corpus size, corpus annotation, etc. Suggestions for further research are proposed concerning more refined methodology, better corpus composition, and in-depth corpus annotation in order to facilitate the reliability the research.