A Prosodic Phonological Research On Chinese Classic Primers Translation

Classic primers,crystallization of ancestors' wisdom with profound significance,have exerted far-reaching influence on the development of Chinese civilization.Taking full account of children's cognitive characteristics,with short clauses and melodious rhymes,most classic primers are suitable for chanting.Chanting,as the main creation approach of Chinese poetry,is the masterpiece of China's intangible cultural heritage,containing the unique charm of Chinese culture.Chinese classic primers,serving the main purpose of carrying forward traditional Chinese culture,are widely disseminated and praised through chanting,nurturing Chinese people generation after generation.However,recent researches show that most translation studies have been concentrated on the text language and culture conversion of classic primers,whereas little efforts have been made on studies concerning phonetic aspect.In addition,previous researches on classic primers translation are mainly conceptual studies lacking data support.Given this fact,based on prosodic phonology and by means of data-driven method,a systematic and comparative study on Qian Zi Wen and its three English versions is conducted in this paper.This research analyzes the adaptation of three English versions from the Chinse original in terms of its chanting features,in the hope of exploring translation standards of classic primers and finding out the most ideal translation version for enlightening education.In this study,Qian Zi Wen by Zhou Xinsi is taken as the source text.Versions translated by Wang Baotong,Zhao Yanchun and Nathan Sturman are chosen as the target texts.Research parameters are pitch,duration,end sonorant and end rhyme.Two types of corpora,including speech corpora and text corpora,are established.In terms of speech corpora,the establishment of them relies on speech synthesis software InterPhonic;and Praat is used to extract pitch and duration data.To follow the literary form of Chinese original text,the audio file is segmented into four-character clauses accordingly with the help of Cool Edit Pro V2.1.When it comes to text corpora,we label phonetic symbols of the last character in each clause.Sentences with significant features are further analyzed as case studies.Finally,it is found that the most satisfying translation version and conclusions are inferred according to chanting characteristics of classic primers.The main findings can be summarized as follows:In terms of pitch,Wang's version is considered the most desirable after a combined analysis on tone range and waviness.It can be found that the average tone range in Wang's version has the minimum gap from the Chinese original,approximately 1 St higher than that of the original.Over 2 St higher than the original,the average tone ranges in Zhao's and Sturman's version have prominent differences form the Chinese original.That is to say,in comparison with Zhao's and Sturman's version,Wang's version performs best in tone range with the smallest difference.At the same time,in sub-range waviness analysis,the tone of Wang's version is much closer to that of the original,which keeps a great balance between the mood of exclamatory and imperatives.In duration part,Zhao's version is found the best one with the minimal gap from the original.The shortest duration of Zhao's translation lies in its strict imitation of the four-character form,omission of sentence elements,and more use of imperative sentences.However,more complete sentences with grammatical elements can be found in both Wang's and Sturman's versions,which enlarge the duration of each clause and are considered not suitable for chanting.Therefore,Zhao's translation is more readable and more persuasive in this respect.When it comes to end sonorant,nearly 50% of Wang's version ends with sonorants,followed by Sturman's version with 46.4% and Zhao's version with 36.4%.In Wang's version,over 50% of clauses with end sonorants are ended with vowels,which indicates that,among three versions,the readability and musicality of Wang's translation have the best performance.In end rhyme aspect,three versions all focus on its employment.Wang's version and Zhao's version use end rhymes throughout the translations,while 77.6% of Sturman's version uses end rhymes.Wang's version creatively rhymes every 8 syllables,corresponding to rhyming every 8 words of the original text.Zhao's version follows the Chinese original with four-character form whose structure is suitable for children to chant and memorize.However,in Sturman's version,the applying of end rhymes is not that prominent,and most of them are scattered with no regularity.