thesis mandarin translation

ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst

Home > HFA > LLC > ASIANLAN > CHINESE_THESES

Chinese Masters Theses Collection

Theses from 2023 2023.

Insights into Chinese Second Language Acquisition: The Relationship between Glossing and Vocabulary Recall in Reading , Steven S. DeVellis, Chinese

Acquisition of Chinese Measure Words by Chinese as Second Language Learners: A Corpus-based Study of Lexical, Semantic, and Syntactic Characteristics , Yutong Feng, Chinese

Between Verb and Preposition: Diachronic Stages of Coverbs in Mandarin Chinese , Glynis Jones, Chinese

The Near-Synonymous Classifiers in Mandarin Chinese: Etymology, Modern Usage, And Possible Problems in L2 Classroom , Irina Kavokina, Chinese

Voices Against an Era: Alternative Voices, Cultural Heroics, and the Impact of He Yong and Zhang Chu on Chinese Rock Music , Peter J. Moncur, Chinese

Theses from 2022 2022

Second Language Competence and Translation Ability: An Investigation of English-native Speakers Learning Chinese as a Second Language , Chensimeng Pan, Chinese

The Different Waves of "Chineseness": Analysis of Culture References and Lyrics in Zhongguofeng Music , Austin S. Ye, Chinese

An Investigation into American University Students’ Motivation for Chinese Learning: A Case Study , Qingqing Zhang, Chinese

Theses from 2021 2021

The Acquisition of Advanced Level Chinese Heritage Language (CHL) Learners：A Comparative Analysis Concerning The Aspect Marker “LE了” , Jingjing Ao, Chinese

Self-representation in Selected Poems of Gu Taiqing (1799-1877) , Li-Ting Chang, Chinese

On Shattered Ruins: The Cultural Practices and Production of the Great Tanghsna Earthquake in Post-Mao Literature and Film , Jinhui Chen, Chinese

TBLT in Virtual L2 Classroom: Challenges, Actions and Insights , Jianan He, Chinese

Women in a Fallen City: The Rape of Nanking and The Flowers of War , Tianle Wang, Chinese

Theses from 2020 2020

LITERARY PORTRAYALS OF RELIGIOUS AWAKENING THROUGH SUFFERING AND LOSS - BUDDHIST, DAOIST, AND CHRISTIAN PERSPECTIVES , Robert Canning, Chinese

INVESTIGATION OF THE CONSONANT ENDINGS OF THE CHAOSHAN DIALECT: A RESULT OF LANGUAGE CONTACT AND HORIZONTAL TRANSMISSION , Jin Chen, Chinese

A Textbook-Based Study on Cultural Knowledge Acquisition in Learners of Chinese as a Foreign Language , Feng Gao, Chinese

Urbanlization and Internet Literature: Zhang Jiajia and His Healing Story , Shayue Qi, Chinese

Perfective Marker Dao in the Nanjiang Dialect , Kun Yue, Chinese

The Sutras as Poetry: Wang Wei's Use of Buddhist Philosophy as Poetic Image , Yan Zhang, Chinese

Theses from 2019 2019

READING AND TRANSLATING “NOW-NESS” AND “CONTINUITY” IN THE IMAGISTIC LANGUAGE OF TANG POEMS , Mei Du, Chinese

Translation Issues in Modern Chinese Literature: Viewpoint, Fate and Metaphor in Xia Shang's "The Finger-Guessing Game" , Jonathan Heinrichs, Chinese

The Morality Of Chinese Legalism: Han Fei’s Advanced Philosophy , Yuan Ke, Chinese

A Study on English-speaking Learners' Acquisition of Three Chinese Modal Auxiliary Verbs: NENG, HUI ,And KEYI , Anqi Li, Chinese

NEW WINE IN AN OLD BOTTLE: PROPAGANDA AND ADAPTATION OF THE WHITE-HAIRED GIRL IN POST-SOCIALIST CHINA , Ha Yeon Shin, Chinese

A Triad of Dilemmas in Sylvia Chang’s Films: Women in Love, Family and Society , Fanzhe Yang, Chinese

Reconsidering Diasporic Literature: "Homeland" and "Otherness" in The Lost Daughter of Happiness , Qijun Zhou, Chinese

Theses from 2018 2018

Probing into the Historical and Geographical Variants of Mandarin: A Computational Approach , Annie Chen, Chinese

Psychological with a Xuanyi Afterthought: A Translation of Cai Jun's "Kidnapped" and a Critical Introduction to His Popular Suspense Fiction , Katherine G. Holtrop, Chinese

A Study of the Intertexts in The Stone Of Goddess Nüwa (Nüwa Shi 女娲石) , Zhimo Li, Chinese

Studies on L2 Acquisition of Chinese Verbs of 'Change' by English Speakers , Baoqing Qian, Chinese

Decentralization in Wei Te-sheng's Film , Ji Wang, Chinese

ROLE-PLAY IN THE CHINESE CLASSROOM , Matthew Werth, Chinese

QUEST FOR PURE LOVE AND EQUAL RELATIONSHIP: THE GENESIS AND MEANING OF CHINESE DANMEI NOVEL , Mengwu Yun, Chinese

Theses from 2017 2017

Second Language Acquisition of Chinese Verb-Noun Collocations , Ying Cai, Chinese

Storytelling in the Age of Post-socialism: Wang Xiaoshuai’s “Third Front Trilogy” , Xuesong Shao, Chinese

A Linguistic Study on the Four Editions of Bǎijiā xìng 百家姓 in hP’ags-pa Script , Sicheng Wang, Chinese

Theses from 2016 2016

The Phonological System of A Xin'an Idiolect , Shuiying Lu, Chinese

THE HARMONIOUS CONCLUSIONS OF PEONY PAVILION & THE LUTE , Alexander McCartin, Chinese

Buddhist Depiction of Life in the Verse of the Tang Dynasty Poet Han Shan , Sijia Niu, Chinese

A Study On the Mutual Replacements of Three des in Chinese Blogs , Hui Sha, Chinese

A Textbook-Based Study on Measure Word Acquisition in Learners of Chinese as A Second Langauge , Shaofang Wang, Chinese

Genuineness and Love: A Study of Feng Menglong's Collection of Mountain Songs (Shan'ge 山歌) , Yujia Ye, Chinese

Youth Narrative in Feng Tang's The Beijing Trilogy , Mingjia Zhang, Chinese

Theses from 2015 2015

Building a Democratic Consciousness in Taiwan: An Analysis of Lung Ying-tai’s Political Essays Over Three Decades (1984–2003) , Conrad W. Bauer, Chinese

Analyzing Two Key Points of the Huaihai Campaign Using Sun Tzu's Net Assessment , Jimmy Chien, Chinese

Dwelling in the Vision of Utopia: A Politico-Religious Reading of Tao Qian , Jiani Lian, Chinese

THE LINGUISTIC ANALYSIS OF CHINESE EMOTICON , Xiangxi Liu, Chinese

The Effectiveness of Explicit Instruction Versus Implicit Instruction Method on Chinese Grammar Acquisition , Fuyang Peng, Chinese

Theses from 2014 2014

An Investigation of Native and Non-Native Chinese Language Teachers and Their Pedagogical Advantages , Thomas Burns, Chinese

Acoustic Analysis of the Tones in the Shantou Dialect , Danni Li, Chinese

A Study on the Acquisition of Chinese Directional Complements , lin lin, Chinese

Inferring Word-Meaning, Morpheme-Based, and Word-Based Second Language Vocabulary Teaching Methodologies , Qingli Liu, Chinese

An Investigation of Chinese Learners' Acquisition and Understanding of Bushou and Their Attitude on Formal In-Class Bushou Instruction , Yan P. Liu, Chinese

THE PHONOLOGICAL CHARACTERITICS AND THE HISTORICAL STRATA OF THE QIANJIANG DIALECT , Liyan Luo, Chinese

Theses from 2013 2013

The Reflexes of Middle Chinese Zhi and Zhao Initials in Modern Mandarin and Wu Dialect , Yu-jung Liang, Chinese

Study on Shan Gui: From Religious Text to Visual Representations , Le Lu, Chinese

The History of the Introduction of Chinese Language and Culture into the American Higher Education System , Chelsea H. Nakabayashi, Chinese

The Foundations of Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language: An Investigation of Late 19th Century Textbooks , Lena Pearson, Chinese

The plural forms of personal pronouns in Modern Chinese , Baoying Qiu, Chinese

A Translation of Qiu Miaojin's "The Crocodile Diaries" , Alexandra Valencik, Chinese

The Use of Multimedia Material in Teaching Chinese as a Second Language and Pedagogical Implications , Zhongyuan Williams, Chinese

Dialects into Films----The Element of “Dialect” in Chinese Films , Shun Yao, Chinese

The Comparison Of Meaning-inferred, Meaning-given, And Sentence Translation Methods For Chinese Vocabulary Teaching , Yani Zeng, Chinese

A Comparative Study of the Effectiveness of Input-based Activities And Output-based Activities on the Acquisition of Chinese Language , Xiaolei Zhang, Chinese

Theses from 2012 2012

A Diachronic and Synchronic Examination of the Disposal Construction in Min and Mandarin Chinese , Chunching Chang, Chinese

The Artist as Creator: The Theory of Art in Du Fu's Poems about Paintings , James H. Edwards, Chinese

Danmei Literature as Indicator of Social Change: A Sociocultural Analysis of Xiao Chun’s Collide , Patrick l. Hamilton, Chinese

Xunzian Political Philosophy: Pioneering Pragmatism , Brandon King, Chinese

Motivation of Chinese Language Learners: A Case Study in a Intermediate Chinese Class , Hong Yan, Chinese

The Phonological Features of Sino-Khitan and Its Relations to the Origin of Northern Mandarin , Man Zhang, Chinese

Theses from 2011 2011

The Phonological Features and the Historical Strata of the Heyang Dialect , Xiaoying Li, Chinese

The Effects of Recasts and Explicit Feedback on Chinese Language Acquisition in the Task-based Classroom , Lei Yang, Chinese

Theses from 2010 2010

Teaching Character Formation Rationales with a Computer-Assisted Courseware , Bo Feng, Chinese

Expressions of Self in a Homeless World: Zhang Dai (1597-1680?) and His Writings in the Ming-Qing Transition Period , Wenjie Liu, Chinese

Readings Of Chinese Poet Xue Tao , Lu Yu, Chinese

Theses from 2009 2009

A Record of the Defense of Xiangyang's City Wall, 1206-1207 , Julie J. Avery, Chinese

The Pursuit and Dispelling of Holy Heterosexual Love: from "Love Must Not Be Forgotten" to Wu Zi , Li Li, Chinese

Bai Juyi's poems about women/ , Xiaohua Liu, Chinese

Formation Of The Xikun Style Poetry , Jin Qian, Chinese

The Cfl Students’ Perspective of the Chinese Ambiguous Sentences , Ting Juan Song, Chinese

Theses from 2008 2008

Integrating multimedia into Chinese character teaching and learning for Cfl beginners/ , Weijia Li, Chinese

The Moral and Racial Socialization of Children: The Image of Wu Feng in Taiwan School Readers , Claire R. Maccabee, Chinese

A study of the standardization of Chinese writing/ , Ying Wang, Chinese

Theses from 2007 2007

Reinventing the wheel or creating a tale's genealogy? :: a comparison of twelve versions of the tale of Mulan/ , Julie Anne Lohr, Chinese

The variegated blossoms :: studies on the children characters in the literary productions of Chi Zijian/ , Xuebo Sun, Chinese

Theses from 2006 2006

A comparison of the Guodian and Mawangdui Laozi texts/ , Dan Murphy, Chinese

Theses from 2005 2005

The images of Jiangnan in Zhao Mengfu's (1254-1322) poetry/ , Li E, Chinese

Uniting the ancestors :: Cheng Minzheng (1445-1499) and the creation of the Comprehensive Genealogy of the Xin'an Cheng (Xin'an Chengshi Tongzong Shipu)/ , Neil E. Mcgee, Chinese

Theses from 2004 2004

An annotated translation of "Accounts of supernatural retribution"/ , Elliot Meier Billings, Chinese

Theses from 2003 2003

Toponyms of the Nanzhao periphery/ , John C. Lloyd, Chinese

Theses from 2002 2002

Chinese color word evolution/ , Mary E. Franck, Chinese

We undergo, we experience and we write :: an analysis of contemporary Chinese women writers and their writings/ , Yujie Ge, Chinese

Theses from 2000 2000

Role models in the contemporary Chinese essay :: Ba Jin and the post-cultural revolution memorial essays in Suixiang lu/ , Larissa Castriotta, Chinese

The 1977-1978 archaeological excavations of the Lu cemeteries at Qufu, Shandong/ , James Patrick Draine, Chinese

Purity, modernity, and pessimism :: translation of Mu Shiying's fiction/ , Rui Tao, Chinese

Theses from 1999 1999

Li Zhi (1527-1602) and his literary thought/ , Qingliang Chen, Chinese

Theses from 1998 1998

Opening the Lancang (Mekong) River in Yunnan :: problems and prospects for Xishuangbanna/ , Merrick Lex Berman, Chinese

The single-child policy and its impact on Chinese kinship terms among kindergarten children in Shanghai/ , Xiaoxue Dai, Chinese

Theses from 1996 1996

Translation of Yuan Qiongqiong's Fever, with introduction/ , Julie Felice Marcus, Chinese

Theses from 1993 1993

New features of Confucianism as seen in Lu Jia's Xinyu/ , Shaodan Luo, Chinese

Advanced Search

• Notify me via email or RSS
• Collections
• Disciplines

Author Corner

• Login for Faculty Authors
• Faculty Author Gallery
• Expert Gallery
• University Libraries
• Asian Languages and Literatures Website
• UMass Amherst

This page is sponsored by the University Libraries.

© 2009 University of Massachusetts Amherst • Site Policies

Privacy Copyright

• < Previous

Home > ART_SCI > ART_SCI_ETDS > 2941

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Decolonizing chinese literary and cultural studies in “world literature”: decolonial translation and magical-traumatic realism in can xue.

Deanna Ren Follow

Date of Award

Spring 5-2023

Author's School

Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

Author's Department

East Asian Languages and Culture: Chinese

Degree Name

Master of Arts (AM/MA)

Degree Type

This study takes a genealogical and historicized approach to Mandarin-to-English translations, including my own, of Can Xue through neoliberal discourses of “world literature.” I ground these Anglophone discourses in the legacies of Sinology, area studies and post-Cold War historiography. Arguing for the necessity of a decolonial translation practice in Mandarin-to-English translation, I propose magical-traumatic realism (an intersection of magical realism and traumatic realism) as an alternative lens with which to contextualize, decolonize and re-embody Can Xue’s works in both source and “world” contexts.

English (en)

Chair and Committee

Committee members.

Jamie Newhard, Gerhild Williams

Recommended Citation

Ren, Deanna, "Decolonizing Chinese Literary and Cultural Studies in “World Literature”: Decolonial Translation and Magical-Traumatic Realism in Can Xue" (2023). Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations . 2941. https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/art_sci_etds/2941

Included in

Chinese Studies Commons , Language Interpretation and Translation Commons , Modern Literature Commons , Race, Ethnicity and Post-Colonial Studies Commons

https://doi.org/10.7936/s89z-3421

Advanced Search

• Notify me via email or RSS
• Arts & Sciences
• Collections
• Disciplines

Author Corner

• Submission Guidelines
• Submit Research

Home | About | FAQ | My Account | Accessibility Statement

Privacy Copyright

• Search Menu
• Browse content in Arts and Humanities
• Browse content in Archaeology
• Anglo-Saxon and Medieval Archaeology
• Archaeological Methodology and Techniques
• Archaeology by Region
• Archaeology of Religion
• Archaeology of Trade and Exchange
• Biblical Archaeology
• Contemporary and Public Archaeology
• Environmental Archaeology
• Historical Archaeology
• History and Theory of Archaeology
• Industrial Archaeology
• Landscape Archaeology
• Mortuary Archaeology
• Prehistoric Archaeology
• Underwater Archaeology
• Urban Archaeology
• Zooarchaeology
• Browse content in Architecture
• Architectural Structure and Design
• History of Architecture
• Residential and Domestic Buildings
• Theory of Architecture
• Browse content in Art
• Art Subjects and Themes
• History of Art
• Industrial and Commercial Art
• Theory of Art
• Biographical Studies
• Byzantine Studies
• Browse content in Classical Studies
• Classical History
• Classical Philosophy
• Classical Mythology
• Classical Literature
• Classical Reception
• Classical Art and Architecture
• Classical Oratory and Rhetoric
• Greek and Roman Epigraphy
• Greek and Roman Law
• Greek and Roman Papyrology
• Greek and Roman Archaeology
• Late Antiquity
• Religion in the Ancient World
• Digital Humanities
• Browse content in History
• Colonialism and Imperialism
• Diplomatic History
• Environmental History
• Genealogy, Heraldry, Names, and Honours
• Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing
• Historical Geography
• History by Period
• History of Emotions
• History of Agriculture
• History of Education
• History of Gender and Sexuality
• Industrial History
• Intellectual History
• International History
• Labour History
• Legal and Constitutional History
• Local and Family History
• Maritime History
• Military History
• National Liberation and Post-Colonialism
• Oral History
• Political History
• Public History
• Regional and National History
• Revolutions and Rebellions
• Slavery and Abolition of Slavery
• Social and Cultural History
• Theory, Methods, and Historiography
• Urban History
• World History
• Browse content in Language Teaching and Learning
• Language Learning (Specific Skills)
• Language Teaching Theory and Methods
• Browse content in Linguistics
• Applied Linguistics
• Cognitive Linguistics
• Computational Linguistics
• Forensic Linguistics
• Grammar, Syntax and Morphology
• Historical and Diachronic Linguistics
• History of English
• Language Acquisition
• Language Evolution
• Language Reference
• Language Variation
• Language Families
• Lexicography
• Linguistic Anthropology
• Linguistic Theories
• Linguistic Typology
• Phonetics and Phonology
• Psycholinguistics
• Sociolinguistics
• Translation and Interpretation
• Writing Systems
• Browse content in Literature
• Bibliography
• Children's Literature Studies
• Literary Studies (Asian)
• Literary Studies (European)
• Literary Studies (Eco-criticism)
• Literary Studies (Romanticism)
• Literary Studies (American)
• Literary Studies (Modernism)
• Literary Studies - World
• Literary Studies (1500 to 1800)
• Literary Studies (19th Century)
• Literary Studies (20th Century onwards)
• Literary Studies (African American Literature)
• Literary Studies (British and Irish)
• Literary Studies (Early and Medieval)
• Literary Studies (Fiction, Novelists, and Prose Writers)
• Literary Studies (Gender Studies)
• Literary Studies (Graphic Novels)
• Literary Studies (History of the Book)
• Literary Studies (Plays and Playwrights)
• Literary Studies (Poetry and Poets)
• Literary Studies (Postcolonial Literature)
• Literary Studies (Queer Studies)
• Literary Studies (Science Fiction)
• Literary Studies (Travel Literature)
• Literary Studies (War Literature)
• Literary Studies (Women's Writing)
• Literary Theory and Cultural Studies
• Mythology and Folklore
• Shakespeare Studies and Criticism
• Browse content in Media Studies
• Browse content in Music
• Applied Music
• Dance and Music
• Ethics in Music
• Ethnomusicology
• Gender and Sexuality in Music
• Medicine and Music
• Music Cultures
• Music and Religion
• Music and Media
• Music and Culture
• Music Education and Pedagogy
• Music Theory and Analysis
• Musical Scores, Lyrics, and Libretti
• Musical Structures, Styles, and Techniques
• Musicology and Music History
• Performance Practice and Studies
• Race and Ethnicity in Music
• Sound Studies
• Browse content in Performing Arts
• Browse content in Philosophy
• Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art
• Epistemology
• Feminist Philosophy
• History of Western Philosophy
• Metaphysics
• Moral Philosophy
• Non-Western Philosophy
• Philosophy of Science
• Philosophy of Language
• Philosophy of Mind
• Philosophy of Perception
• Philosophy of Action
• Philosophy of Law
• Philosophy of Religion
• Philosophy of Mathematics and Logic
• Practical Ethics
• Social and Political Philosophy
• Browse content in Religion
• Biblical Studies
• Christianity
• East Asian Religions
• History of Religion
• Judaism and Jewish Studies
• Qumran Studies
• Religion and Education
• Religion and Health
• Religion and Politics
• Religion and Science
• Religion and Law
• Religion and Art, Literature, and Music
• Religious Studies
• Browse content in Society and Culture
• Cookery, Food, and Drink
• Cultural Studies
• Customs and Traditions
• Ethical Issues and Debates
• Hobbies, Games, Arts and Crafts
• Lifestyle, Home, and Garden
• Natural world, Country Life, and Pets
• Popular Beliefs and Controversial Knowledge
• Sports and Outdoor Recreation
• Technology and Society
• Travel and Holiday
• Visual Culture
• Browse content in Law
• Arbitration
• Browse content in Company and Commercial Law
• Commercial Law
• Company Law
• Browse content in Comparative Law
• Systems of Law
• Competition Law
• Browse content in Constitutional and Administrative Law
• Government Powers
• Judicial Review
• Local Government Law
• Military and Defence Law
• Parliamentary and Legislative Practice
• Construction Law
• Contract Law
• Browse content in Criminal Law
• Criminal Procedure
• Criminal Evidence Law
• Sentencing and Punishment
• Employment and Labour Law
• Environment and Energy Law
• Browse content in Financial Law
• Banking Law
• Insolvency Law
• History of Law
• Human Rights and Immigration
• Intellectual Property Law
• Browse content in International Law
• Private International Law and Conflict of Laws
• Public International Law
• IT and Communications Law
• Jurisprudence and Philosophy of Law
• Law and Politics
• Law and Society
• Browse content in Legal System and Practice
• Courts and Procedure
• Legal Skills and Practice
• Primary Sources of Law
• Regulation of Legal Profession
• Medical and Healthcare Law
• Browse content in Policing
• Criminal Investigation and Detection
• Police and Security Services
• Police Procedure and Law
• Police Regional Planning
• Browse content in Property Law
• Personal Property Law
• Study and Revision
• Terrorism and National Security Law
• Browse content in Trusts Law
• Wills and Probate or Succession
• Browse content in Medicine and Health
• Browse content in Allied Health Professions
• Arts Therapies
• Clinical Science
• Dietetics and Nutrition
• Occupational Therapy
• Operating Department Practice
• Physiotherapy
• Radiography
• Speech and Language Therapy
• Browse content in Anaesthetics
• General Anaesthesia
• Neuroanaesthesia
• Browse content in Clinical Medicine
• Acute Medicine
• Cardiovascular Medicine
• Clinical Genetics
• Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics
• Dermatology
• Endocrinology and Diabetes
• Gastroenterology
• Genito-urinary Medicine
• Geriatric Medicine
• Infectious Diseases
• Medical Toxicology
• Medical Oncology
• Pain Medicine
• Palliative Medicine
• Rehabilitation Medicine
• Respiratory Medicine and Pulmonology
• Rheumatology
• Sleep Medicine
• Sports and Exercise Medicine
• Clinical Neuroscience
• Community Medical Services
• Critical Care
• Emergency Medicine
• Forensic Medicine
• Haematology
• History of Medicine
• Browse content in Medical Dentistry
• Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery
• Paediatric Dentistry
• Restorative Dentistry and Orthodontics
• Surgical Dentistry
• Browse content in Medical Skills
• Clinical Skills
• Communication Skills
• Nursing Skills
• Surgical Skills
• Medical Ethics
• Medical Statistics and Methodology
• Browse content in Neurology
• Clinical Neurophysiology
• Neuropathology
• Nursing Studies
• Browse content in Obstetrics and Gynaecology
• Gynaecology
• Occupational Medicine
• Ophthalmology
• Otolaryngology (ENT)
• Browse content in Paediatrics
• Neonatology
• Browse content in Pathology
• Chemical Pathology
• Clinical Cytogenetics and Molecular Genetics
• Histopathology
• Medical Microbiology and Virology
• Patient Education and Information
• Browse content in Pharmacology
• Psychopharmacology
• Browse content in Popular Health
• Caring for Others
• Complementary and Alternative Medicine
• Self-help and Personal Development
• Browse content in Preclinical Medicine
• Cell Biology
• Molecular Biology and Genetics
• Reproduction, Growth and Development
• Primary Care
• Professional Development in Medicine
• Browse content in Psychiatry
• Addiction Medicine
• Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
• Forensic Psychiatry
• Learning Disabilities
• Old Age Psychiatry
• Psychotherapy
• Browse content in Public Health and Epidemiology
• Epidemiology
• Public Health
• Browse content in Radiology
• Clinical Radiology
• Interventional Radiology
• Nuclear Medicine
• Radiation Oncology
• Reproductive Medicine
• Browse content in Surgery
• Cardiothoracic Surgery
• Gastro-intestinal and Colorectal Surgery
• General Surgery
• Neurosurgery
• Paediatric Surgery
• Peri-operative Care
• Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery
• Surgical Oncology
• Transplant Surgery
• Trauma and Orthopaedic Surgery
• Vascular Surgery
• Browse content in Science and Mathematics
• Browse content in Biological Sciences
• Aquatic Biology
• Biochemistry
• Bioinformatics and Computational Biology
• Developmental Biology
• Ecology and Conservation
• Evolutionary Biology
• Genetics and Genomics
• Microbiology
• Molecular and Cell Biology
• Natural History
• Plant Sciences and Forestry
• Research Methods in Life Sciences
• Structural Biology
• Systems Biology
• Zoology and Animal Sciences
• Browse content in Chemistry
• Analytical Chemistry
• Computational Chemistry
• Crystallography
• Environmental Chemistry
• Industrial Chemistry
• Inorganic Chemistry
• Materials Chemistry
• Medicinal Chemistry
• Mineralogy and Gems
• Organic Chemistry
• Physical Chemistry
• Polymer Chemistry
• Study and Communication Skills in Chemistry
• Theoretical Chemistry
• Browse content in Computer Science
• Artificial Intelligence
• Computer Architecture and Logic Design
• Game Studies
• Human-Computer Interaction
• Mathematical Theory of Computation
• Programming Languages
• Software Engineering
• Systems Analysis and Design
• Virtual Reality
• Browse content in Computing
• Business Applications
• Computer Security
• Computer Games
• Computer Networking and Communications
• Digital Lifestyle
• Graphical and Digital Media Applications
• Operating Systems
• Browse content in Earth Sciences and Geography
• Atmospheric Sciences
• Environmental Geography
• Geology and the Lithosphere
• Maps and Map-making
• Meteorology and Climatology
• Oceanography and Hydrology
• Palaeontology
• Physical Geography and Topography
• Regional Geography
• Soil Science
• Urban Geography
• Browse content in Engineering and Technology
• Agriculture and Farming
• Biological Engineering
• Civil Engineering, Surveying, and Building
• Electronics and Communications Engineering
• Energy Technology
• Engineering (General)
• Environmental Science, Engineering, and Technology
• History of Engineering and Technology
• Mechanical Engineering and Materials
• Technology of Industrial Chemistry
• Transport Technology and Trades
• Browse content in Environmental Science
• Applied Ecology (Environmental Science)
• Conservation of the Environment (Environmental Science)
• Environmental Sustainability
• Environmentalist Thought and Ideology (Environmental Science)
• Management of Land and Natural Resources (Environmental Science)
• Natural Disasters (Environmental Science)
• Nuclear Issues (Environmental Science)
• Pollution and Threats to the Environment (Environmental Science)
• Social Impact of Environmental Issues (Environmental Science)
• History of Science and Technology
• Browse content in Materials Science
• Ceramics and Glasses
• Composite Materials
• Metals, Alloying, and Corrosion
• Nanotechnology
• Browse content in Mathematics
• Applied Mathematics
• Biomathematics and Statistics
• History of Mathematics
• Mathematical Education
• Mathematical Finance
• Mathematical Analysis
• Numerical and Computational Mathematics
• Probability and Statistics
• Pure Mathematics
• Browse content in Neuroscience
• Cognition and Behavioural Neuroscience
• Development of the Nervous System
• Disorders of the Nervous System
• History of Neuroscience
• Invertebrate Neurobiology
• Molecular and Cellular Systems
• Neuroendocrinology and Autonomic Nervous System
• Neuroscientific Techniques
• Sensory and Motor Systems
• Browse content in Physics
• Astronomy and Astrophysics
• Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics
• Biological and Medical Physics
• Classical Mechanics
• Computational Physics
• Condensed Matter Physics
• Electromagnetism, Optics, and Acoustics
• History of Physics
• Mathematical and Statistical Physics
• Measurement Science
• Nuclear Physics
• Particles and Fields
• Plasma Physics
• Quantum Physics
• Relativity and Gravitation
• Semiconductor and Mesoscopic Physics
• Browse content in Psychology
• Affective Sciences
• Clinical Psychology
• Cognitive Psychology
• Cognitive Neuroscience
• Criminal and Forensic Psychology
• Developmental Psychology
• Educational Psychology
• Evolutionary Psychology
• Health Psychology
• History and Systems in Psychology
• Music Psychology
• Neuropsychology
• Organizational Psychology
• Psychological Assessment and Testing
• Psychology of Human-Technology Interaction
• Psychology Professional Development and Training
• Research Methods in Psychology
• Social Psychology
• Browse content in Social Sciences
• Browse content in Anthropology
• Anthropology of Religion
• Human Evolution
• Medical Anthropology
• Physical Anthropology
• Regional Anthropology
• Social and Cultural Anthropology
• Theory and Practice of Anthropology
• Browse content in Business and Management
• Business Strategy
• Business Ethics
• Business History
• Business and Government
• Business and Technology
• Business and the Environment
• Comparative Management
• Corporate Governance
• Corporate Social Responsibility
• Entrepreneurship
• Health Management
• Human Resource Management
• Industrial and Employment Relations
• Industry Studies
• Information and Communication Technologies
• International Business
• Knowledge Management
• Management and Management Techniques
• Operations Management
• Organizational Theory and Behaviour
• Pensions and Pension Management
• Public and Nonprofit Management
• Strategic Management
• Supply Chain Management
• Browse content in Criminology and Criminal Justice
• Criminal Justice
• Criminology
• Forms of Crime
• International and Comparative Criminology
• Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice
• Development Studies
• Browse content in Economics
• Agricultural, Environmental, and Natural Resource Economics
• Asian Economics
• Behavioural Finance
• Behavioural Economics and Neuroeconomics
• Econometrics and Mathematical Economics
• Economic Systems
• Economic History
• Economic Methodology
• Economic Development and Growth
• Financial Markets
• Financial Institutions and Services
• General Economics and Teaching
• Health, Education, and Welfare
• History of Economic Thought
• International Economics
• Labour and Demographic Economics
• Law and Economics
• Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics
• Microeconomics
• Public Economics
• Urban, Rural, and Regional Economics
• Welfare Economics
• Browse content in Education
• Adult Education and Continuous Learning
• Care and Counselling of Students
• Early Childhood and Elementary Education
• Educational Equipment and Technology
• Educational Strategies and Policy
• Higher and Further Education
• Organization and Management of Education
• Philosophy and Theory of Education
• Schools Studies
• Secondary Education
• Teaching of a Specific Subject
• Teaching of Specific Groups and Special Educational Needs
• Teaching Skills and Techniques
• Browse content in Environment
• Applied Ecology (Social Science)
• Climate Change
• Conservation of the Environment (Social Science)
• Environmentalist Thought and Ideology (Social Science)
• Natural Disasters (Environment)
• Social Impact of Environmental Issues (Social Science)
• Browse content in Human Geography
• Cultural Geography
• Economic Geography
• Political Geography
• Browse content in Interdisciplinary Studies
• Communication Studies
• Museums, Libraries, and Information Sciences
• Browse content in Politics
• African Politics
• Asian Politics
• Chinese Politics
• Comparative Politics
• Conflict Politics
• Elections and Electoral Studies
• Environmental Politics
• European Union
• Foreign Policy
• Gender and Politics
• Human Rights and Politics
• Indian Politics
• International Relations
• International Organization (Politics)
• International Political Economy
• Irish Politics
• Latin American Politics
• Middle Eastern Politics
• Political Methodology
• Political Communication
• Political Philosophy
• Political Sociology
• Political Behaviour
• Political Economy
• Political Institutions
• Political Theory
• Politics and Law
• Public Administration
• Public Policy
• Quantitative Political Methodology
• Regional Political Studies
• Russian Politics
• Security Studies
• State and Local Government
• UK Politics
• US Politics
• Browse content in Regional and Area Studies
• African Studies
• Asian Studies
• East Asian Studies
• Japanese Studies
• Latin American Studies
• Middle Eastern Studies
• Native American Studies
• Scottish Studies
• Browse content in Research and Information
• Research Methods
• Browse content in Social Work
• Addictions and Substance Misuse
• Adoption and Fostering
• Care of the Elderly
• Child and Adolescent Social Work
• Couple and Family Social Work
• Developmental and Physical Disabilities Social Work
• Direct Practice and Clinical Social Work
• Emergency Services
• Human Behaviour and the Social Environment
• International and Global Issues in Social Work
• Mental and Behavioural Health
• Social Justice and Human Rights
• Social Policy and Advocacy
• Social Work and Crime and Justice
• Social Work Macro Practice
• Social Work Practice Settings
• Social Work Research and Evidence-based Practice
• Welfare and Benefit Systems
• Browse content in Sociology
• Childhood Studies
• Community Development
• Comparative and Historical Sociology
• Economic Sociology
• Gender and Sexuality
• Gerontology and Ageing
• Health, Illness, and Medicine
• Marriage and the Family
• Migration Studies
• Occupations, Professions, and Work
• Organizations
• Population and Demography
• Race and Ethnicity
• Social Theory
• Social Movements and Social Change
• Social Research and Statistics
• Social Stratification, Inequality, and Mobility
• Sociology of Religion
• Sociology of Education
• Sport and Leisure
• Urban and Rural Studies
• Browse content in Warfare and Defence
• Defence Strategy, Planning, and Research
• Land Forces and Warfare
• Military Administration
• Military Life and Institutions
• Naval Forces and Warfare
• Other Warfare and Defence Issues
• Peace Studies and Conflict Resolution
• Weapons and Equipment

• < Previous chapter
• Next chapter >

2.11 Literary Translation and Modern Chinese Literature

JI Jin is Professor of Chinese Literature at Suzhou University, and is the author, in Chinese, of Qian Zhongshu and Modern Western Thought, The Sage in Fortress Beseiged, Dialogues between Ji Jin and Leo Ou-Fan Lee, Chen Quan: A Borrowed Mirror from a Foreign Land, Another Kind of Voice: Interviews with Foreign Sinologists, and Reciprocal Perspectives. He is the editor of the Chinese-language volume, Letters Between C.T. Hsia and T.A. Hsia, and he is the Editor in Chief of the series “Collection of Canonical Works by Modern Western Critics” and “Collection of Overseas Chinese Literary Studies.”

• Published: 01 September 2016
• Cite Icon Cite
• Permissions Icon Permissions

Since the late Qing, literature in translation and modern Chinese literature have maintained a symbiotic relationship. Translation, understood as an entirely new means of creation and expression rather than a mere change in language, profoundly influenced modern Chinese literature with regard to narrative structures and techniques as well as generic and formal innovations. Literature in translation can be considered from the dual perspectives of cultural alterity and sameness; even as the process of translation was influenced by modern literature, translation played an important role in the development of modern Chinese literature. To regard literature in translation as an integral part of modern Chinese literature challenges how we define the “Chineseness” of Chinese literature. It allows for a new understanding of the dialectic relationship between literature in translation and modern Chinese literature in the broader context of world literature and thus opens up new possibilities for literary creation.

In March of 1920, China’s first collection of poetry in the modern vernacular, Hu Shi’s 胡適 (1891–1926) Experiments (嘗試集), was published by Shanghai’s East-Asia Library and was enthusiastically received. Hu Shi sought to free his poetry from the fetters of traditional poetic forms, to break with tradition, and to craft an entirely new type of poetry in free verse in the modern vernacular out of a metamorphosis of traditional verse. With this work, Hu Shi paved the way for a new generation of poetic writing in Chinese, but his daring innovation featured an element of translation. For instance, the poem “Uncontainable!” (關不住了!) was not Hu Shi’s own creation but rather was a translation of “Over the Roofs” by the US poet Sara Teasdale (1884–1933):

我說： “我把我的心收起, 像人家把門關了, 叫愛情生生的餓死, 也許不再和我為難了” 。 但是屋頂上吹來, 一陣陣五月的濕風, 更有那街心琴調, 一陣陣的吹到房中。 一屋裡都是太陽光, 這時候愛情有點醉了, 他說： “我是關不住的, 我要把你的心打碎了!” 1 I said, “I have shut my heart, As one shuts an open door, That Love may starve therein And trouble me no more.” But over the roofs there came The wet new wind of May, And a tune blew up from the curb Where the street-pianos play. My room was white with the sun And Love cried out in me, “I am strong, I will break your heart Unless you set me free.” 2

From a contemporary perspective, to include a translated work in this sort of volume might well appear unimaginable, though those familiar with late Qing literature know that this kind of phenomenon was actually quite common. When we look back at the development of Chinese literature from the late Qing onward, we see that literary translation occupied a prominent position. In fact, literary translation and the development of modern Chinese literature were closely connected. Since literary translations constituted a large portion of the Chinese literary works published in the modern era, when the production and consumption of translated literature flourished, the impact of literary translations on the modernization of modern Chinese literature cannot be overestimated. In fact, the link between literary translations and modern Chinese literature became a special condition for modern literature, as literary translation encouraged and propitiated the development of modern Chinese literature.

The earliest and arguably most important literary translations were, of course, the novels translated by Lin Shu 林紓 (1852–1924). Since Lin Shu had no knowledge of foreign languages and had to rely on oral translations by others, his process of translation involved a considerable amount of creation. Frequently, Lin Shu’s understanding of a text even emerged from a misreading of the original text, which became the basis for rewriting and embellishment, yet this was precisely what led to the birth of the genre of literature in translation. Qian Zhongshu 錢鍾書 (1910–1998) described how

when Lin Shu was of the opinion that the original text was not sufficiently beautiful, he added a bit here and embellished a bit there, and thus rendered a text’s language more concrete, made its scenes more lively, and added literary flourish to its descriptions. We cannot but think of the instances in Sima Qian’s 司馬遷 Records of the Historian (史記)—which Lin Shu worshipped—in which past accounts were polished and embellished. … When he [Lin Shu] came across literary infelicities or deficits of the original in the process of translation, he had to usurp the writer’s pen and emend these. 3

One of Lin Shu’s most important achievements was bringing foreign works into the fold of China’s cultural tradition, since he effected a Westernization of the language of Chinese modern literature, thereby crafting a language that resembled the original and yet was also quite different from it.

We could even claim that Lin Shu’s literary translations are actually an integral part of Chinese literature, and in fact many other writers began writing literature under the influence of Lin Shu’s translations. Lin Shu’s translation of Alexandre Dumas fils’s The Lady of the Camellias ( La dame aux camélias ; Chinese title: 巴黎茶花女遺事) and other novels into literary Chinese profoundly influenced the changes in narrative structure, perspective, and genre of modern Chinese fiction. For instance, Su Manshu’s 蘇曼殊 (1884–1918) The Lone Swan (斷鴻零雁記) and Xu Zhenya’s 徐枕亞 (1889–1937) Jade Pear Spirit (玉梨魂) and The Snow Crane’s Tears (雪鴻淚史) were directly influenced by Lin Shu’s rendition of The Lady of the Camellias . Translators like Lin Shu contributed to a situation in which translation became creation, thus linking early translations into literary Chinese and novels composed in literary Chinese and shaping the distinctive textual form of literary translations.

What was true for texts translated into literary Chinese was equally true for those translated into the modern vernacular, the earliest of which was Edward Bulwer Lytton’s (1803–1873) Night and Morning (Chinese title: 昕夕閑談), though it would be more apt to call this a rewriting rather than a straight translation. 4 In 1902, Liang Qichao 梁啟超 (1873–1929) and his collaborators translated Jules Verne’s (1828–1905) Two Years’ Vacation ( Deux ans de vacances , Chinese title: 两年假期) into vernacular Chinese and published it in the journal New Citizen (新民叢報) that Liang had founded. Afterward, The New Novel (新小說) and other journals published translations of numerous novels into modern vernacular Chinese, and in 1906 the first association of translators, the Society for Translation and Communication, was founded in Shanghai. 5

The translations produced during what Patrick Hanan has called the “second period of translating fiction into modern Chinese” beginning in 1902 also contained many additions and deletions, as well as instances of rewriting. 6 For instance, when Zhou Guisheng 周桂笙 (1873–1936) translated Fortuné du Boisgobey’s (1821–1891) In the Serpent’s Coil ( Margot la balafrée , Chinese title: 毒蛇圈), he added a long passage describing how the female protagonist Camille (Chinese name 妙兒) missed her father Tiburce Gerfaut (Chinese name 鐵瑞福). In the afterword, editor Wu Jianren 吳趼人 explained:

The passage in which Camille misses her father does not appear in the original. Since the text earlier describes Gerfaut’s profound longing for his daughter time and again in such intensity, I think that not mentioning Camille’s longing for her father, so as to balance kindness and filiality, would inevitably constitute a shortcoming. … It was very expedient of the translator to insert this passage. Even though the original work lacks this passage, I know that Camille cannot but have felt this way, and therefore even though the passage may be fabricated, it is not at all superfluous. 7

All of these works, irrespective of whether they were translated into literary Chinese or the modern vernacular, focused on the power of the narrator, on changes in the structure of chapters, and on new content, and thus systematically opened the way for the creation of a new literature in modern Chinese. It can be said without exaggeration that modern Chinese fiction was a new literary genre that emerged thanks to the influence of translated novels. Lu Xun’s 魯迅 (1881–1936) “Diary of a Madman” (狂人日記), published in the journal New Youth (新青年) in May 1918, symbolized the “official” birth of modern narrative by way of its innovative literary form, but it also drew on the influences that Lu Xun had received from translated literature, including Nikolai Gogol’s (1809–1852) “Diary of a Madman,” Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s (1821–1881) descriptions of mental illness, and Mikhail Artsybashev’s (1878–1927) psychological analyses. Whether it was through their description of interiority, their narrative perspective, or their temporal structure, these translations all contributed to the complete renewal of modern narrative.

The flourishing of literature in translation after the late Qing went hand in hand with the development of modern Chinese literature and became an important practice of modern literature. Literature in translation constituted a completely new means of modern creation and expression, and was no longer merely an instrument for the transfer from one language into another. After several decades of development, the earlier practice of translation in which rendition into another language was coupled with rewriting and adaptation gradually disappeared, replaced by translations that were more faithful to the originals. These literary works in translation became the object of study, imitation, and reference for modern writers. Apart from a minority of writers able to read foreign literature in the original, Chinese authors mostly accessed these works through translations, which implied an inherent connection between translation and the production of modern literature that became increasingly important.

Translations in the Contemporary Period

The success of many writers has its origin in the study of and reference to literature in translation. For instance, the narrative style of avant-garde writer Ge Fei 格非 in the late 1980s shifted from realism to a more reflexive mode of writing. Even though this emerged partly from Ge Fei’s own experiences, the influence of writers like Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986), Gabriel García Márquez (1927–2014), and other non-Chinese writers whose work Ge Fei read in translation had an equally strong impact on him. Under the influence of literature in translation, Ge Fei, Yu Hua 余華, Su Tong 蘇童, and other young avant-garde writers were able to break with established modes of writing and develop their individual styles, which provided an alternative experience in a time of ideological rupture and was key in China’s process of literary renewal and transformation.

Ge Fei’s early writings and Borges’s stories show similar literary structures, especially their interest in metatextual conceits. Borges often drew on his vast erudition and used other books and historical records as models for his stories, offering modern rewritings of earlier texts such as the Bible to endow his new stories with complex layers and to craft complex metatextual structures. In this respect, Ge Fei’s stories “Greenish Yellow” (青黃) and “Ye Lang’s Journey” (夜郎之行) follow the spirit of Borges’s “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius” and “The Immortal” (El inmortal). “Greenish Yellow” narrates the process of researching a term, greenish yellow , that appears in the fictive History of Chinese Courtesans . On one hand, the visit of the first-person narrator to Mai Village to do research drives the work’s plot; on the other, content from History of Chinese Courtesans is inserted in this plotline. What makes this even more distinctly unreal is that the text inserts the narrator’s deductions about the fictional plot into the story itself. Therefore, the story of the term greenish yellow in History of Chinese Courtesans , the story’s own narrative, together with the narrative within the narrative intersect repeatedly, and consequently the reality of greenish yellow becomes ever more indistinct through constant repetition. After oscillating between reality and fiction, the story concludes by having the narrator return to the library and find a dictionary entry that specifies that greenish yellow is actually the name of a plant—a perennial of the Scrophulariales family. This resembles the way in which research about Tlön in Borges’s story is inspired by the aphorism “mirrors and copulation are abominable, for they multiply the number of mankind,” which triggers the discovery of the imaginary world of Tlön in which being is secondary to thought. 8 Since all things rely on thought for their existence, Tlön’s existence influences reality: “Contact with Tlön, the habit of Tlön, has disintegrated this world. Spellbound by Tlön’s rigor, humanity has forgotten, and continues to forget, that it is the rigor of chess masters, not of angels.” 9

These narratives often skillfully use realistic detail as an entry point into their texts. For instance, the fascination with the term greenish yellow in “Greenish Yellow” is attributed to a specific page of the fictitious History of Chinese Courtesans , just as the appearance of the world of Tlön follows a character’s consultation of The Anglo-American Cyclopaedia , in a process that mixes reality and fiction. This gives the reader a bewildering sense of the real, only to take a turn toward the fictional by way of rapidly presenting something that is difficult to ascertain, so that reality is purely the point of emergence of a fictional story and conceptual reflection. As a result, reality and fiction become intricately fused.

The similarity between “Ye Lang’s Journey” and “The Immortal” lies in the pursuit and abandonment of an ideal world. This illusionary structure uses the narrator’s journey as plot line and serves as background for the historical content of a book, resulting in a series of twists and turns, and ultimately in flight. The creatively powerful insertion of the plot between historical records creates the hallucinatory effect of a dialogue between reality and history. In the postscript to “The Immortal,” Borges writes: “ As the end approaches … there are no longer any images from memory—there are only words .” 10 Similarly, Ge Fei writes at the beginning of “Ye Lang’s Journey”: “Afterwards Ye Lang’s journey has been proven to be incorrect, since Ye Lang had already disappeared from the records and from the imaginary.” 11 Both confessions are quite similar. Borges’s story uses a rewriting of the last volume of Alexander Pope’s draft of the translation of the Iliad to reveal how the text within the text has infiltrated history and leads to the search for the city and the river of the immortals, while Ge Fei’s text reveals that the story’s plot is fictional, based on the traditional story of “Yelang’s city,” in order to turn reality into a literary construct that enters a story derived from history. In both Borges’s and Ge Fei’s texts, an imaginary world blurs the limit between history and reality as the narratives oscillate between reality and fiction, thereby endowing their texts with a special quality.

While Ge Fei’s relationship with Borges’s works is one of emulation and citation, other writers have adopted an original writing style through a dialogue with literature in translation. This does not necessarily entail a rejection of literature in translation, but rather points to a more sophisticated reception. For a truly accomplished writer, the study and emulation of literature in translation by no means constitutes an obstacle; instead, it may reveal a broader artistic and spiritual space. For instance, Han Shaogong’s 韓少功 Dictionary of Maqiao (馬橋詞典) and its use of the form of the dictionary novel may have been influenced by Milan Kundera (b. 1929), who composed a dictionary of his own works in The Art of the Novel ( L’art du roman , 1986), or by Milorad Pavic’s (1929–2009) Dictionary of the Khazars ( Hazarski rečnik , 1984), but these translated works only provided Han Shaogong with creative inspiration. Han’s success lies in how he pushes the form of the dictionary novel to its extreme in order to craft an entire aesthetic world. The novel uses the local dialect of Maqiao in order to recount Maqiao’s history, geography, people, and customs, as well as explanations of the author’s persona in the form of stories and integrates them into the structure of a dictionary novel. What is even more remarkable is that Han Shaogong uses a local dialect that had long been ignored in order to subvert the popular vernacular, and shows that a world full of meaning lies behind the culture of the people. From this he crafts an entirely new space for language and literary art for Chinese literature. Han Shaogong manages to surpass his predecessors Kundera and Pavic and create new artistic meaning.

No matter whether authors such as Ge Fei and Han Shaogong use literature in translation as an object of imitation or as a model to be contested, the close attention to literature in translation elucidates the complex link between translated literature and Chinese literature. The flourishing and development of modern literature cannot be separated from a contemporary engagement with literature in translation, which has already become an important literary practice on a par with the production of Chinese literature. And yet, in light of the enormous amount of literary translations in the modern era, we cannot but ask how we might integrate the history of literary translations and their continued influence into the narrative of the history of modern Chinese literature. How can we rethink the dialectical relation between literature in translation and modern Chinese literature, as well as the possibility of literature and literary creation from the broader perspective of world literature? These are key questions that a discussion of literary translation and modern literature has to address.

Literary History

In the 1920s and 1930s, a group of early critics of China’s new literature included literary translations in their purview of a narrative of literary history. For instance, Chen Zizhan’s 陳子展 (1898–1990) A History of the Chinese Literature of the Past Thirty Years (最近三十年中國文學史), Zhu Ziqing’s 朱自清 (1898–1948) An Outline of Research on New Chinese Literature (中國新文學研究綱要), Wang Zhefu’s 王哲甫 A History of China’s New Literature Movement (中國新文學運動史), Guo Zhenyi’s 郭箴一 A History of the Chinese Novel (中國小說史), and others all dedicate chapters specifically to the discussion of literature in translation. But afterwards, the role of literature in translation in the development of Chinese literature rarely received thorough consideration in literary histories. Since the 1980s, even though projects with a systemic objective, such as Huang Xiuyi’s 黃修已 A History of Chinese Literature in the Twentieth Century (20世紀中國文學史) and Chen Sihe’s 陳思和 A Complete View of New Chinese Literature (中國新文學整體觀), began to pay more attention to the formative influence and creative changes in Chinese literature caused by foreign cultures and literatures, the unique discursive contribution of literature in translation rarely enters into the framework of research on literary history. In discussions of Chinese literature, literature in translation is usually treated merely as foreign literature and is thereby accorded a secondary status.

Only after the 1990s did scholars like Xie Tianzhen 謝天振 begin to push for the consideration of literature in translation as part of modern Chinese literature and to view it as a distinctive literary practice that was as important as the production of literature. Xie Tianzhen emphasized that literature in translation must be considered part of modern Chinese literature, arguing that “literary translation is a form of literary production, as well as a form of existence for a work of literature. From this vantage point, literary translation and literature in translation have their own aesthetic value.” 12

The independent aesthetic value of literature in translation derives from its combination of alterity and indigeneity. On one hand, literature in translation is the translation of literary works of authors from foreign countries, and in this respect it provides a new perspective on the production of Chinese literature and enriches the creation of Chinese writers. This kind of alterity provides the basis for research on the link between Chinese and foreign literatures. Most contemporary comparative literature approaches focusing on the relationship between Chinese and foreign literatures trace the influences of foreign literary works on Chinese literature and are thus based on the paradigm of alterity. It is also this alterity that makes literature in translation appear foreign on readers’ bookshelves, and encourages us to overlook the translator who gives them a second life.

On the other hand, traditional translation theory often focuses on the question whether it is possible to transmit the original faithfully; this kind of pursuit of faithfulness in translation, however, ignores the role of literature in translation as a distinctive literary practice, while the existence of translation errors and of retranslation underscores the indigenous quality of translated literature. It is a basic fact that the language of literature in translation is that of its host culture, and its words and phrases reveal the erudition and literary knowledge of the translator. In the process of translation, retranslations and mistranslations are unavoidable, and the linguistic changes of the host culture, differences in the status of translators, and adjustments in the objectives of translation all mean that literature in translation undergoes changes in order to facilitate its reception. Literature in translation is a kind of creative, transcultural betrayal. After being translated, a literary work no longer belongs only to its original literary world, since it has become fused with a new cultural horizon and has thereby become part of another linguistic and literary world. Once we view literature in translation as a part of Chinese literature, we will gain new insight into the relationship between Chinese and foreign literatures.

How literature in translation finds a balance between alterity and indigeneity is the best test of a translator’s powers of literary expression and of cultural understanding. The extraordinary power of translation lies in its ability to express the essence of another culture as well as that of its host culture. In the age of globalization, world literature has already become an imaginary commons by means of global circulation, translation, and dissemination, and every translator and translated work plays an important role in this process. As Itamar Even-Zohar writes, “I conceive of translated literature not only as an integral system within any literary polysystem, but as a most active system within it.” 13 I would like to call for more of what Walter Benjamin terms “real translation”: “A real translation is transparent; it does not cover the original, does not block its light, but allows the pure language, as though reinforced by its own medium, to shine upon the original all the more fully.” 14 In these “real” literary translations, different literatures and cultures collide, enter into exchange, and mutually support each other, continually renewing each other’s concept of literature and aesthetic modes and enriching the discursive realm of world literature. Of course, translated literature is the most active part in the multicultural polysystem of literature, and serves to negotiate between different cultures and incessantly imports new elements into a culture. Cultural translation introduces an element of alterity and, at the same time, continually deconstructs the hegemony of the dominant culture and promotes the fusion of different cultures.

World literature is evolving into an expression of cultural globalization and aesthetic reality. Given that modern Chinese literature is part of world literature, what kind of challenge does translated literature face? What kind of change can literature in translation and modern literature elucidate? On one hand, modern Chinese literature is itself already part of world literature, and in a way, Chinese literature has already become “world literature’s Chinese literature.” On the other hand, as long as the world remains a virtual Tower of Babel, translated literature will continue to have meaning and value, exerting its influence on the spirit of modern Chinese literature and its forms of expression.

In the discourse of world literature, every literature needs to maintain and develop its distinctive aesthetic character through interactions with others. Following the spread of economic globalization, information technology, international capital, and mass media, we face a period of cultural relativism and symbiosis. In this context, all literatures have their raison d’être, and we have even less means to transcend the total structure of world literature and to insist on singing only to our own tune. Instead, contemporary Chinese literature will always subsist and develop within the context and discursive realm of world literature, it will always be an inescapable other. In fact, the literatures of different countries are foreign to one another, but they collectively constitute the imaginary commons of world literature. Therefore, we can even less afford to overlook the presence and value of literature in translation, since it is precisely by means of translation that Chinese literature can become even more strongly a part of world literature.

Accordingly, if we regard literature in translation as part of modern Chinese literature, we should not limit our inquiry into modern literature to the internal, homogeneous dimension of modern literary creation, but should pay attention to modern Chinese literature’s multiplicity and heterogeneity. Through the intervention of translators and through a change in language, what was once foreign literature is no longer located outside of Chinese literature, and instead has become a corpus of texts filled with the subjectivity and creativity of translators who use Chinese as their means of expression. Furthermore, translated texts have maintained mutually beneficial links with Chinese literary creation and have become a part of modern Chinese literature. Of course, to treat translated texts as a part of Chinese literature also implies the othering of Chinese literature itself, challenges the “Chineseness” of Chinese literature, and changes the status of Chinese literature. As a result, Chinese literature is no longer a hermetically closed, self-sufficient system, but has been endowed with a global dimension. If this is the age of world literature, therein lies the hope for Chinese literature.

(translated by Andrea Bachner)

1. Hu Shi 胡適 . “Guan bu zhu le!” 關不住了! [Uncontainable!], in Changshi ji 嘗試集 [Experiments] (Beijing: Renmin wenxue chubanshe, 1984), 44.

2. Sara Teasdale , “Over the Roofs,” Poetry 3.6 (March 1914): 200.

3. Qian Zhongshu 錢鍾書 , “Lin Shu de fanyi” 林紓的翻譯 [Lin Shu’s translations], in Qi zhui ji 七綴集 [Seven pieces patched together] (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1996), 85–86.

4. Patrick Hanan 韓南 , “Baihua fanyi xiaoshuo de di’er ge jieduan” 白話翻譯小 說的第二個階段 [The second phase of translations of novels into modern Chinese], in Hanan Zhongguo xiaoshuo lun ji 韓南中國小說論集 [A collection of Patrick Hanan’s writings on Chinese novels] (Beijing: Beijing daxue chubanshe, 2008), 321.

See Hanan, “The Second Phase of Translations of Novels into Modern Chinese,” 322.

See Hanan, “The Second Phase of Translations of Novels into Modern Chinese.”

7. Fortuné du Boisgobey , Margot la balafrée , trans. Zhou Guisheng 周桂笙 as Du she quan 毒蛇圈 [In the serpent’s coil] (Changsha: Yuelu Shushe, 1991), 87.

8. Jorge Luis Borges , “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius,” in Collected Fictions , trans. Andrew Hurley (New York: Penguin, 1998), 68–81, quotation at 68.

Borges, “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius,” 81.

10. Jorge Luis Borges , “The Immortal,” in Collected Fictions , trans. Andrew Hurley (New York: Penguin, 1998), 183–195, quotation at 195.

11. Ge Fei 格非 , Ge Fei wenji: Shu yu shi; Yelang zhi xing 格非文集： 樹與石; 夜郎之行 [Works by Ge Fei: The tree and the stone; Yelang’s journey] (Nanjing: Jiangsu wenyi chubanshe, 1996), 257.

12. See Xie Tianzhen 謝天振 , Yijiexue: Bijiao wenxue yu fanyi yanjiu xin shihe 譯介學： 比較文學與翻譯研究新視野 [Translation studies: New perspectives on comparative literature and research on translation] (Shanghai: Fudan daxue chubanshe, 2011), 113.

13. Itamar Even-Zohar , “The Position of Translated Literature within the Literary Polysystem,” Poetics Today 11.1 (1990): 45–51, quotation at 46.

14. Walter Benjamin , “The Task of the Translator,” in Illuminations , trans. Harry Zohn , ed. Hannah Arendt (Glasgow: Fontana/Collins, 1970), 69–82, quotation at 79.

Works Cited

Benjamin, Walter. “The Task of the Translator.” Illuminations . Trans. Harry Zohn , ed. Hannah Arendt . Glasgow: Fontana/Collins, 1970 . 69–82.

Google Scholar

Google Preview

du Boisgobey, Fortuné . Margot la balafrée . Trans. Zhou Guisheng 周桂笙 as Du she quan 毒蛇圈 [In the serpent’s coil]. Changsha: Yuelu shushe, 1991 .

Borges, Jorge Luis.   Collected Fictions . Trans. Andrew Hurley . New York: Penguin, 1998 .

Even-Zohar, Itamar. “ The Position of Translated Literature within the Literary Polysystem. ” Poetics Today 11.1 ( 1990 ): 45–51.

Hanan, Patrick 韓南 . “Baihua fanyi xiaoshuo de di’er ge jieduan” 白話翻譯小說的第二個階段 [The second phase of translations of novels into modern Chinese]. In Hanan Zhongguo xiaoshuo lun ji 韓南中國小說論集 [A collection of Patrick Hanan’s writings on Chinese novels]. Beijing: Beijing daxue chubanshe, 2008 . 321.

Hu Shi 胡適 . “Guan bu zhu le!” 關不住了! [Uncontainable!]. In Changshi ji 嘗試集 [Experiments]. Beijing: Renmin wenxue chubanshe, 1984 . 44.

Qian Zhonghu 錢鍾書 . “Lin Shu de fanyi” 林紓的翻譯 [Lin Shu’s translations]. In Qi zhui ji 七綴集 [Seven pieces patched together]. Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1996 . 85–86.

Teasdale, Sara . “ Over the Roofs. ” Poetry 3.6 (March 1914): 200.

Xie Tianzhen 謝天振 . Yijiexue: Bijiao wenxue yu fanyi yanjiu xin shihe 譯介學： 比較 文學與翻譯研究新視野 [Translation studies: New perspectives on comparative literature and research on translation]. Shanghai: Fudan daxue chubanshe, 2011 .

• About Oxford Academic
• Publish journals with us
• University press partners
• What we publish
• New features  
• Open access
• Institutional account management
• Rights and permissions
• Get help with access
• Accessibility
• Advertising
• Media enquiries
• Oxford University Press
• Oxford Languages
• University of Oxford

Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide

• Copyright © 2024 Oxford University Press
• Cookie settings
• Cookie policy
• Privacy policy
• Legal notice

This Feature Is Available To Subscribers Only

Sign In or Create an Account

This PDF is available to Subscribers Only

For full access to this pdf, sign in to an existing account, or purchase an annual subscription.

The Role of Translation Played in the Evolution of Mandarin: A Corpus-based Account

• First Online: 29 August 2019

Cite this chapter

• Hongwu Qin 4 ,
• Lei Kong 4 &
• Ranran Chu 4  

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Translating and Interpreting ((PTTI))

594 Accesses

This chapter begins with an overview of the studies on translational Chinese over the past decades in China. Traditionally, translation studies would take translational language as a source of examples for the discussion of translation techniques, the focus being on the choice of words or structures; little is said about the language as a whole. Nowadays, translational language is an independent system or variety, of which the holistic and macroscopic features become accessible in the era of corpus linguistics under the strong support of IT. In China, corpus-based translation studies have a history of a mere 10 years. However, such a short period marks a rapid development both in the building of parallel corpus and researches on that basis. A good case in point is the employment of parallel corpora in the study of the development of Mandarin in the twentieth century. In this study, we look into the evolution of Mandarin from a CLC (construction’s load capacity) perspective. It finds that the evolution of Mandarin is clearly shown in the increase of CLC and in the structural complexity of the constituents in the constructions, and it goes in parallel with the sudden and rapid changes typical of translational Mandarin after the May 4th Movement. However, it should be noted that, considering what original Mandarin selectively replicates are the features of translational language but not those of the source language (Western languages), the so-called Europeanization does not exist.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

• Available as PDF
• Read on any device
• Instant download
• Own it forever
• Available as EPUB and PDF
• Compact, lightweight edition
• Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
• Free shipping worldwide - see info
• Durable hardcover edition

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

The term loc stands for localizer in Mandarin; Num stands for number; CL stands for classifier, or a measure word. For example, 一-头 is composed by 一 (Num, ‘one’) and 头 (CL, ‘head’).

According to Douglas and Miller ( 2016 ), factors with significant correlations with complexity across writing and reading samples are lexile, mean length sentence (MLS), mean length clause (MLC), and complex nominals per T-unit (CN/T). In our research, the length of the modifiers, the number of modifiers, and the use of pre-positioned clausal modifiers all contribute to syntactic complexity.

As is found in Ji ( 2010 : 39–40), in translating multilayered Castilian sentences into Mandarin (the same is true for translation from English to Mandarin), the long sentences in the source text tend to get broken down into a number of relatively shorter clauses, and these elements are then rearranged or inserted in specific positions of a sentential sequence that is familiar to the Mandarin readership.

By active, we mean they are major sentence constituents used to locate events in time and place (P-L), or to act as subjects or objects (NC-NP or DC-NP).

We choose not to talk about NC-NP construction in the present study, for the construction is also contained in the P-L construction, or partially overlaps with the DC-NP construction.

A typical Mandarin encoding of the relations in Example ( 5a ) could be as follows:

彪形 大汉 坐 在 他 旁边,穿 一身 黑 拷绸 衣裤。 汽车夫 轻声地 对 他 说:

[Gloss] husky fellow sit beside him, wear whole body black silk clothes. Car man says in a low voice to him.

In this Mandarin encoding, more clauses are used, which is a typical way of encoding such relation.

‘Structurally loose modifier’, means the modifier is a full clause (e.g. 相貌 并 不 惊人, literally ‘appearance is not attractive’) is structurally not as compact as a one-word modifier or a phrasal one.

Arya, D. J., Hiebert, E. H., & Pearson, P. D. (2011). The Effects of Syntactic and Lexical Complexity on the Comprehension of Elementary Science Texts. International Electronic Journal of Elementary Education, 4 (1), 107–125.

Google Scholar  

Beaman, K. (1984). Coordination and Subordination Revisited: Syntactic Complexity in Spoken and Written Narrative Discourse. In D. Tannen & R. Freedle (Eds.), Coherence in Spoken and Written Discourse (pp. 45–80). Norwood, NJ: ABLEX.

de Saussure, F. (1983). Course in General Linguistics (R. Harris, Trans.). London: Gerald Duckworth.

Douglas, Y., & Miller, S. (2016). Syntactic and Lexical Complexity of Reading Correlates with Complexity of Writing in Adults. International Journal of Business Administration, 7, 1–10.

Givón, T. (1991). Markedness in Grammar: Distributional, Communicative and Cognitive Correlates of Syntactic Structure. Studies in Language, 15, 335–370.

Article   Google Scholar  

Givón, T. (2009). The Genesis of Syntactic Complexity: Diachrony, Ontogeny, Neuro-cognition, Evolution . Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Book   Google Scholar  

Goldberg, A. E. (2002). Construction Grammar . London: Wiley.

He, Y. (2008). Xiandai Hanyu Ouhua Yufa Xianxiang Yanjiu [On Europeanization in Mandarin]. Beijing: The Commercial Press.

Ji, M. (2010). Phraseology in Corpus-Based Translation Studies . Oxford: Peter Lang.

Kittel, H., & Poltermann, A. (2009). German Tradition. In M. Baker & G. Saldanha (Eds.), Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies (pp. 411–418). London: Routledge.

Peyraube, A. (2000). Westernization of Chinese Grammar in the 20th Century: Myth or Reality? Journal of Chinese Linguistics , 28 , 1–26.

Qin, H. (2010). Yin yi Han fanyi yuyan de jiegou rongliang: Jiyu duoyiben yuliaoku de yanjiu [Load capacity of Constructions in Translational Chinese: A Multi-Version Corpus-Based Study]. Journal of Foreign Languages, 7, 73–80.

Szmrecsányi, B. (2004). On Operationalizing Syntactic Complexity. Journées internationales d’Analyse statistique des Données Textuelles, 2, 1032–1039.

Wang, L. (1947). Zhongguo Xiandai Yufa [Chinese Modern Grammar]. Shanghai: Chinese Bookshop.

Wang, K., & Qin, H. (2009). Ying yi Han yuyan tezheng tantao: Jiyu duiying yuliaoku de hongguan fenxi [A Parallel Corpus-Based Study of General Features of Translated Chinese]. Journal of Foreign Language Research, 1, 102–104.

Wang, K., & Qin, H. (2014). What Is Peculiar to Translational Mandarin? A Corpus-Based Study of Chinese Constructions’ Load Capacity. Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory, 1, 57–77.

Xie, Y. (2001). Hanyu yufa ouhua zongshu [A Summation of the Europeanization of Chinese Grammar]. Linguistic Research, 1, 17–22.

Download references

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

Qufu Normal University, Qufu, China

Hongwu Qin, Lei Kong & Ranran Chu

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Editor information

Editors and affiliations.

Institute of Corpus Studies and Applications, Shanghai International Studies University, Shanghai, China

School of Foreign Languages, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China

Kyung Hye Kim

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2020 The Author(s)

About this chapter

Qin, H., Kong, L., Chu, R. (2020). The Role of Translation Played in the Evolution of Mandarin: A Corpus-based Account. In: Hu, K., Kim, K. (eds) Corpus-based Translation and Interpreting Studies in Chinese Contexts. Palgrave Studies in Translating and Interpreting. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21440-1_2

Download citation

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21440-1_2

Published : 29 August 2019

Publisher Name : Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

Print ISBN : 978-3-030-21439-5

Online ISBN : 978-3-030-21440-1

eBook Packages : Social Sciences Social Sciences (R0)

Share this chapter

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

• Publish with us

Policies and ethics

• Find a journal
• Track your research

Academia.edu no longer supports Internet Explorer.

To browse Academia.edu and the wider internet faster and more securely, please take a few seconds to  upgrade your browser .

Enter the email address you signed up with and we'll email you a reset link.

• We're Hiring!
• Help Center

Master Thesis: METAPHORS FOR THINKING IN MODERN MANDARIN CHINESE: A CORPUS STUDY

Related Papers

Asian Culture and History

minjie xing

Martin Svensson Ekström

Edward Slingerland

Beatrice Gallelli

The ‘Chinese dream’ sums up China’s goals in the twenty-first century. Since its first ap- pearance in 2012, the concept of the Chinese dream has been the core of Xi Jinping’s “new thoughts, new ideas and new arguments”. At the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China it was elevated as one of the guiding principles of ‘Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era’, which represents the latest effort towards the Sinicization of Marx- ism. This paper aims at casting light on whether the discourse on the Chinese dream carries new contents or is based on old concepts ‘camouflaged’ as new. To do so, it will analyse the ideological implications of those ‘creative metaphors’ that compose the discursive mosaic of the Chinese dream as used by Xi Jinping in his political speeches. Drawing on the studies on conceptual metaphors and frame analysis, this study analyses those metaphorical expressions that are purposely outlined in the transcription of the speeches with the aim of signaling the originality of “Xi’s language style”. The final aim is to provide insight into what these ‘creative metaphors’ are doing in contemporary China. Results show that ‘creative metaphors’ in the discourse on the Chinese dream are meant to set the agenda on revitalising morality within the Party as well as ‘unifying’ values in today’s Chinese society, and most of them are far from being new in Chinese political discourse.

54 | Supplemento | 2018

The ‘Chinese dream’ sums up China’s goals in the twenty-first century. Since its first appearance in 2012, the concept of the Chinese dream has been the core of Xi Jinping’s “new thoughts, new ideas and new arguments”. At the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China it was elevated as one of the guiding principles of ‘Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era’, which represents the latest effort towards the Sinicization of Marxism. This paper aims at casting light on whether the discourse on the Chinese dream carries new contents or is based on old concepts ‘camouflaged’ as new. To do so, it will analyse the ideological implications of those ‘creative metaphors’ that compose the discursive mosaic of the Chinese dream as used by Xi Jinping in his political speeches. Drawing on the studies on conceptual metaphors and frame analysis, this study analyses those metaphorical expressions that are purposely outlined in the transcription of the ...

Theory and Practice in Language Studies

ZUNSHUAI LI

8 9 Abstract Western scholarship on early Chinese thought has tended to either dismiss 10 the foundational role of metaphor or to see it as a uniquely Chinese mode of 11 apprehending the world. This article argues that, while human cognition is in fact 12 profoundly dependent on imagistic conceptual structures, such dependence is by no 13 means a unique feature of Chinese thought. The article reviews empirical evidence 14 supporting the claims that human thought is fundamentally imagistic; that 15 sensorimotor schemas are often used to structure our understanding of abstract 16 concepts; that these schemas can be selectively combined to result in novel 17 structures; and that there are inextricable connections between body, emotion, and 18 thought in both everyday and philosophical cognition. It also provides a review of a 19 recent trend where, explicitly or not, scholars from a variety of backgrounds have 20 begun to take metaphor more seriously as a foundational bearer of philoso...

Following the publication of Lakoff and Johnson’s (1980) influential Metaphors We Live By it has become widely recognized in cognitive science and linguistics that metaphor is ubiquitous in language and cognition: complex and abstract concepts are often thought and talked about in terms of conceptually simpler and more concrete notions. A fairly recent outcome of this

The untranslatable words in a language contain a large amount of information because it holds implications regarding the culture in which it is formed and shaped. If properly studied, they not only are able to provide cultural concepts but more importantly values of which the society lives by; the complex construction of culture through language and the beauty of linguistic cultural relativity.

RELATED PAPERS

Denkmalpflege im Saarland 11

Alfred Schäfer

Nuovo Giornale Nazionale

Vito Sibilio

TMII, 50th Anniversary Memorial Volume

Peter B R Carey

Regional Economies in Action. Standardization of Transport Amphorae in the Roman and Byzantine Mediterranean: Proceedings of the International Conference at the Austrian Archaeological Institute and the Danish Institute at Athens, 16-18 October 2017

Piero Berni Millet

Shaping Archaeological Archives: Dialogues between Fieldwork, Museum Collections, and Private Archives

Rubina Raja

Martin Alejandro Barrera

Indian Ocean World Archaeology Conference, Centre for Islamic Archaeology, University of Exeter, 11th January 2020

Seth Priestman

Sergey Miniaev

olivier crevoisier

William takang

Ghasem Gharib

ARC Journal of Surgery

Revista Ces Salud Publica

DIEGO GUERRERO OCHOA

Türk Ocakları Uluslararası Sempozyumu

Mehmet Serhat YILMAZ

RAFIKA KHABBOUCHI

Borneo Community Health Service Journal

FITRIYA HANDAYANI

Biophysical Chemistry

Sergio Paoletti

ELISABETTA PONTELLO

Asian Journal of Humanities and Social Studies

Yen-Sheng Chiang

College & Research Libraries

Analytical Letters

Anatol Kojło

Nizar hulaimy

Gabriel Bastías

RICHARD ALEXANDER JOHN WILLIAMS

Hee-Won Kim

International Journal of Advanced Research in Electrical, Electronics and Instrumentation Energy

Parul Sheth

原版复制澳洲维多利亚大学毕业证 victoria学位证书文凭学历证书

Journal of Neurosurgical Anesthesiology

jesus Bandres

RELATED TOPICS

•   We're Hiring!
•   Help Center
• Find new research papers in:
• Health Sciences
• Earth Sciences
• Cognitive Science
• Mathematics
• Computer Science
• Academia ©2024

Voice speed

Text translation, source text, translation results, document translation, drag and drop.

Website translation

Enter a URL

Image translation

• Cambridge Dictionary +Plus

Translation of thesis – English–Traditional Chinese dictionary

Your browser doesn't support HTML5 audio

• I wrote my thesis on literacy strategies for boys .
• Her main thesis is that children need a lot of verbal stimulation .

(Translation of thesis from the Cambridge English-Chinese (Traditional) Dictionary © Cambridge University Press)

Examples of thesis

Translations of thesis.

Get a quick, free translation!

Word of the Day

troubleshoot

to discover why something does not work effectively and help to improve it

Searching out and tracking down: talking about finding or discovering things

Learn more with +Plus

• Recent and Recommended {{#preferredDictionaries}} {{name}} {{/preferredDictionaries}}
• Definitions Clear explanations of natural written and spoken English English Learner’s Dictionary Essential British English Essential American English
• Grammar and thesaurus Usage explanations of natural written and spoken English Grammar Thesaurus
• Pronunciation British and American pronunciations with audio English Pronunciation
• English–Chinese (Simplified) Chinese (Simplified)–English
• English–Chinese (Traditional) Chinese (Traditional)–English
• English–Dutch Dutch–English
• English–French French–English
• English–German German–English
• English–Indonesian Indonesian–English
• English–Italian Italian–English
• English–Japanese Japanese–English
• English–Norwegian Norwegian–English
• English–Polish Polish–English
• English–Portuguese Portuguese–English
• English–Spanish Spanish–English
• English–Swedish Swedish–English
• Dictionary +Plus Word Lists
• English–Chinese (Traditional)    Noun
• Translations
• All translations

To add thesis to a word list please sign up or log in.

Add thesis to one of your lists below, or create a new one.

{{message}}

Something went wrong.

There was a problem sending your report.

Language Log

• Comments policy

Stress, emphasis, pause, and meaning in Mandarin

November 8, 2017 @ 4:24 pm · Filed by Victor Mair under Intonation , Phonetics and phonology , Pronunciation , Semantics , Tones

« Annotating the First Page of the First Navajo-English Dictionary | Arabella Kushner, young ambassador of good will »

« previous post | next post »

In " Mandarin Janus sentences " (11/4/17), there arose the question of whether duōshǎo 多少 ("how many") and duō shǎo 多少 ("how few") are spoken differently.  I'm very glad that, in the comments, Chris Button recognizes that Sinitic languages can have stress.  (The same is doubtless true of other tonal languages).

This is an aspect of Mandarin and the other Sinitic languages that most scholars completely ignore and even disavow.  I've written about it from time to time on Language Log, e.g.:

" When intonation overrides tone " (6/4/13) " When intonation overrides tone, part 2 " (5/11/17) " Tones and the brain " (3/3/15) " Dissimilation, stress, sandhi, and other tonal variations in Mandarin (8/26/14) " slip(per) " (7/22/14) " Mandarin by the numbers " (6/8/13) " Where did Chinese tones come from and where are they going? " (6/25/13) " Pinyin memoirs " (8/13/16)

In the next to the last post, I note that University of Oslo student Øystein Krogh Visted has recently (2012) written a very interesting M.A thesis entitled "Nuances of Pronunciation in Chinese:  Lexical Stress in Beijing Mandarin."  Here's a brief description of the thesis:

The pronunciation of Beijing Mandarin, which is the basis for Modern Standard Mandarin, is in reality not as straightforward as it is usually presented. General books on the language and common textbooks in English on the subject usually only give very basic, prescriptive (though supposedly descriptive) analyses of the basic features of pronunciation. Finer points are generally not discussed in any detail. The treatment of amongst other things the aspect of word stress (the parts of words that are emphasized in speech) in mastering and indeed properly understanding Chinese is thus neglected. It has not yet acquired the position in Chinese language-teaching it arguably needs, so that the language may begin to be taught and indeed learned in a more comprehensive manner. This book will take a basic analytical approach to the phenomenon of word stress in Beijing Mandarin. It compares and discusses available meta-information on the topic, as well as its theoretical underpinnings and practical applications, and from a pedagogical starting point aims to bring attention to these important nuances in the Chinese language.

See especially this comment to the last post:

Reading pinyin text for me is as easy as reading English, and I can skim-read it the way I do English. I prefer the texts not to have tone marks, because I have to make an effort to block them out, just as I would have to make an effort to block out accent and stress marks if they were included in normal English text. In this sense, what Wang Yujiang mentioned in several of his comments is true (see especially his excellent response to Cory Lubliner): when Chinese speak or read out a text, they do not enunciate the tones one by one as they are marked in a dictionary. Rather, they develop a rhythm in their reading / speech / singing (for that matter) in which emphasis, stress, and overall "feel" of a sentence / utterance become dominant, rather than the canonical dictionary entry tonal categories of individual characters. This is a phenomenon that a few Czech phoneticians have observed, and Christoph Harbsmeier (the German-Norwegian-Danish Sinologist) has paid particular attention to. The problem is that it's virtually impossible to predict how this will turn out ahead of time for discrete characters. The flow of a sentence or utterance only happens in real time and under the emotions of the moment. Of course, if one is anal about it, one could devise means for notating such spoken sentences once they were uttered, but I don't know how useful that information would be for pedagogical purposes, and to what purpose one would put it other than for phonological research.

Without mentioning names, I know non-native speakers who have astonishingly good mastery of tones for thousands of characters, some of them who even wag their fingers or bob their heads in the air when they pronounce the tones as they are speaking or reading Chinese (it's very painful to watch). The best speakers of Chinese that I know (and here again I'm not mentioning names, though it would be very easy to list a dozen or so of the best), almost uniformly, are not tied to the individual characters / syllables, but rather have developed the ability to grasp the overall sound pattern of whole sentences. It is very impressive (and satisfying) to listen to them do this, and some of them develop this ability very quickly, already within the first year of their study of Mandarin or Cantonese or Taiwanese, or whichever Sinitic language they are studying. In no case are such masters of spoken Chinese languages fixated on the characters.

Nor, I would add, are they fixated on the tones.  Real speakers of Mandarin (and other Sinitic languages) are not robots.  They do not utter sentences and paragraphs as though they were matching the canonical, citation tones listed for characters in dictionaries mechanically one after another to the syllables of their speech.  Rather, human speech has a rhythm and a flow through which it imparts meaning and emotion.

Phoneticians, psycholinguists, and other specialists have studied the phenomenon of pitch at the lexical level and at the sentence level, but the results of their research are not well known (or known at all) to Sinologists and Chinese language teachers.

A couple of citations:

"Jie Liang and Vincent J. van Heuven, "Chinese tone and intonation perceived by L1 and L2 listeners", in Tomas Riad and Carlos Gussenhoven, ed., Tones and Tunes: Experimental studies in word and sentence prosody , pp. 27-62.

Shu-hui Peng, Marjorie K. M. Chan, Chiu-yu Tseng, Tsan Huang, Ok Joo Lee, and Mary E. Beckman, "Towards a Pan-Mandarin System for Prosodic Transcription", in Sun-Ah Jun, ed., Prosodic Typology:  The Phonology of Intonation and Phrasing, Vol. 1 , pp. 230-270.

In the preceding two paragraph quotation, I mentioned Czech scholars who have paid attention to these aspects of Mandarin speech.  Chief among them is the phonologist Oldřich Švarný who recorded huge quantities of the beautiful Pekingese speech of Tang Yunling and analyzed it in terms of stress patterns.  Christoph Harbsmeier, whom I also mentioned above, has arranged for the digitization of this enormous corpus, which makes these invaluable recordings available for further and more sophisticated studies (now that more advanced hardware and software have been developed).

Even more wonderful, Harbsmeier has loaded all of the digitized spoken material from Švarný-Tang into a beta web-site called MILK (Mandarin Audio Idiolect Dictionary).  This makes the material easily accessible to all who are interested in pursuing research on conversationally spoken, not read, Mandarin.  For each line of the transcript, you can open a window that displays the following:  waveform & spectrogram, formants, pitch, and selection stats.  Harbsmeier has informed me that he and his team have also applied Praat-style analysis to the recordings so that we can see where the stress is.  Through all of these devices, the phonetic features of Tang laoshi's speech are made visible.

Now, I invite you to the treat of listening to the 2,200 occurrences of 多少 in the Švarný-Tang corpus as it is recorded in Harbsmeier's MILK .  I think you will be astonished at the wide variation for just this one lexeme as it is realized in the living speech of a reliable native informant.  Enjoy!

21 Comments

Noel hunt said,.

November 8, 2017 @ 6:45 pm

Thanks for the references to works on stress. This is an important area if one wants to speak 'flawless' Chinese, but it's not all. I would also like to see work done on 'articulatory setting' in Chinese. I think a fair amount of work on English and French has been done on this topic, and to some extent Japanese (Timothy Vance) but I have never seen discussions of articulatory setting in Chinese.

Michael Watts said,

November 8, 2017 @ 7:17 pm

I had a native Mandarin speaker tell me that Beijing 北京 is stressed on the first syllable. Unfortunately, I'm not able to hear that — for me, tones 1 and 4 are strong, and tones 2 and 3 are weak, and my mental phonology does not allow for lexical stress to fall on a weak syllable. The tone sequence of 北京 is 3-1, and I inevitably perceive stress on the 京. :-(

Mark Liberman said,

November 9, 2017 @ 7:57 am

For those interested in Mandarin stress, I recommend the works of San Duanmu , perhaps starting with his chapter on " Syllable Structure and Stress " from the Handbook of Chinese Linguistics , and including his book The Phonology of Standard Chinese .

Relevant work that I've been involved with includes " A cross-linguistic study of prosodic focus ", IEEE ICASSP 2015, " Investigating Consonant Reduction in Mandarin Chinese with Improved Forced Alignment ", InterSpeech 2015, and " Prosodic Strength Intrinsic to Lexical Items: A Corpus Study of Tone Reduction in Tone4+Tone4 Words in Mandarin Chinese ", ICSLP 2016.

Victor Mair said,

November 9, 2017 @ 12:21 pm

One of Švarný's students, Hana Třísková, has followed in his steps. She writes: "Yes, I continue working on stress (in fact, on NON-STRESS / reduction, which, in my view, is more interesting and phonologically important in Chinese than stress)".

Here are a couple of recent papers by her:

Třísková, Hana. De-stressed words in Mandarin: drawing parallel with English. In: Hongyin Tao ed. Integrating Chinese Linguistics Research and Language Teaching and Learning. Amsterdam / Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2016. pp. 121–144.

Třísková, Hana. De-stress in Mandarin: clitics, cliticoids and phonetic chunks. In: Istvan Kecskes and Chaofen Sun eds. Key Issues in Chinese as a Second Language Research. New York and London: Routledge, 2017. pp. 29–56.

ISBN: 978-1-138-96053-4

Třísková, Hana. Acquiring and teaching Chinese pronunciation. In: Istvan Kecskes ed., Explorations into Chinese as a Second Language. Cham: Springer, Educational Linguistics series, 2017. pp. 3–30. (broader topic – how to teach Mandarin pronunciation as such)

If someone is really interested in any of these papers, I have pdfs. Additional papers by Hana are available here: https://cas-cz.academia.edu/HanaTriskova/Articles-in-English

Chris Button said,

November 9, 2017 @ 1:46 pm

@ Noel Hunt

I think "Articulatory Setting" has not garnered much attention from linguists because it is too rigid and all-encompassing. While I do feel it can on the whole be better accounted for by more traditional explanations, it does nonetheless highlight a very important aspect of pronunciation – namely that phonemes are essentially abstract and accordingly counter-intuitive to how we generally process speech in syllabic chunks (the syllable being essentially schwa whether underlyingly inherent or overtly manifested).

For example, a /t/ phoneme is only really identifiable through the formants in its surrounding vocalic environment which will vary depending on whether the /t/ is alveolar, lamino-dental, retroflex etc. This is why the /i:/ in "tea" said by a typical speaker of Indian English after an unaspirated retroflex will sound different from the RP or GenAm /i:/ after an aspirated alveolar. As such, it is not simply the consonant that is different, but also the effect it has on the vowel. This can also go the other way – for example the "dark-l" when used in initial position by North Americans may be lighter (i.e. more like a British pronunciation) before certain vowels. In short, although the distinction between consonants and vowels can be refuted on an underlying phonological level (as has been argued for some living languages, and always eventually ends up being the case for reconstructed ones such as Old Chinese and Proto-Indo-European when presented without agenda), a distinction still needs to be maintained on the surface phonetic level, but even there they are crucially still mutually dependent on one another in speech.

Since we like to make speech as easy as possible on our articulators, we predict coming sounds and do not stray any further than is required in order to make the next one – the cumulative effect of this behavior leads to what I think is being termed as "articulatory setting". However, rather than being a "setting", it is simply a reflection of our articulators becoming used to certain articulatory postions and then maximising the efficiency in how we manipulate them in sequences. This is why the initial stages of learning a foreign language with very different sounds from one's own can be physically quite tiring but over time people's mouths adjust as appropriate. If someone wants to mimic a specific accent, I would say the most important aspect is to nail the articulation perfectly and the supposed "articulatory setting" will just be a natural consequence of it.

November 9, 2017 @ 2:23 pm

I should probably add that it is this mutual dependence/influence which is behind diachronic sound change. To continue with the "ti" example above, that is why the "t" has palatalised to /tʃ/ or /ʃ/ in "question" or "nation" before what was originally a high front vowel that, along with "o", is now simply schwa in an unstressed syllable. In terms of synchronic analysis, we then need to arbitrarily decide whether /tʃ/ and /ʃ/ are simply allophones of /t/ or alternatively independent phonemes regardless of their historical origin.

Jerry Friedman said,

November 9, 2017 @ 2:33 pm

Michael Watts: When I took a class in Chinese literature in translation from Prof. Y. K. Kao, I got the impression that all Chinese bisyllables were accented on the first syllable. But I couldn't have told you the tone of any syllable I heard him say.

(At the beginning of the semester, he gave us a handout by Prof. Lynn White with some guidance on pronouncing Wade-Giles and Pinyin, but he said we weren't going to worry about pronunciation. I did notice a slight change in his facial expression when a student read "Liu I" as "Leeoo One."

Have a right paren: )

~flow said,

November 9, 2017 @ 3:23 pm

FWIW there's a 2016 paper by Zuzana Pospěchová available at https://revije.ff.uni-lj.si/ala/article/view/4592/6342 on the Prosodic Transcription of Standard Chinese (PTR) that makes use of the system devided by Oldřich Švarný.

A short sample:

PY: Zuótian Zhāng lǎoshī qǐng wǒmen qù tā jiā chīfàn. PTR: Zuótiān, zhāng-lao³shī, qǐng-women-qu⁴ ta¹-jiā chī-fàn.

昨天张老师请我们去他家吃饭。

Tones are indicated by both diacritics and superscript numbers; the diacritics are for full tones, and the numbers are for weakened tones ("weakened tone ictus-bearing syllables", the paper says). Thus, 'lao³shī' would appear to indicate that both syllables do bear tones, but the second syllable is more prominent. I found this interesting because that closely matches the way I learned the way, whereas David Marjanović reported that "my textbook had "teacher" as lǎoshi, acknowledging the fact that the second syllable is toneless"; maybe there's more than one correct way to pronounce this word.

Bathrobe said,

November 9, 2017 @ 6:58 pm

I think lǎoshi is more appropriate for 老是 than for 老师.

Eidolon said,

November 9, 2017 @ 7:21 pm

How does one "teach" lexical stress? I must confess this concept is alien to me, as I have never encountered, either in foreign language learning or native language learning, pedagogical approaches to imparting an instinct of lexical stress.

Jonathan Smith said,

November 9, 2017 @ 7:50 pm

Thanks to MYL for the links above. A point relevant to some of the above discussion is at p. 14 of Duanmu's chapter: "intuitive agreement on the stress difference between two heavy syllables, such as [jou dəŋ] ‘oil lamp’ in Beijing, is hard to obtain." I.e., speakers simply do not agree which if either syllable of lao3shi1, etc., is stressed, or (more often) simply find the question mystifying. It's not clear which phonetic device(s) might be leveraged to mark emphasis in such cases. I see little benefit in a Švarný-style "phonetic" transcription.

Obviously, intonation is an important thing, and "neutral tone" is an important thing not least as it is a kind of stress loss — driver of "tone sandhi" processes across Sinitic and typologically similar languages. But my naive view is that it would be hard to disprove that Mandarin disyllabic words all have underlying initial stress and that a complex package of factors [compare those noted in the "Corpus Study of Tone Reduction…" abstract above] determines whether or not the second syllable surfaces with neutralized tone + attendant segmental reductions. This seems basically consistent with Duanmu's argument… I think.

November 9, 2017 @ 10:32 pm

Thus, 'lao³shī' would appear to indicate that both syllables do bear tones, but the second syllable is more prominent. I found this interesting because that closely matches the way I learned the way, whereas David Marjanović reported that "my textbook had "teacher" as lǎoshi, acknowledging the fact that the second syllable is toneless"; maybe there's more than one correct way to pronounce this word.

This is probably due to the standard lexical stress for the word in isolation varying in certain contexts.

To give an example from English following the John Wells approach, a word like 'funda'mental has two stressed syllables "fund" and "ment" to attract accents. In isolation, the nuclear tone falls on "ment" as the last stressed syllable to give 'funda\mental (dictionaries usually refer to this as secondary and primary stress since they don't mark intonation tones). However, when combined with 'problem (or rather \problem in isolation), a native speaker tends to de-accent the middle stressed syllable "ment" (in what John Wells calls "The Rule of 3") to leave the phrase 'fundamental 'problem (or rather 'fundamental \problem with the nuclear tone marked). Only the most proficient non-native speakers are ever going to produce something like that.

November 10, 2017 @ 6:38 am

@ Jonathan Smith

My understanding, if I understand Kratochvil's work correctly, is that there is a tendency towards iambic (unstressed – stressed) alternations across an intonation phrase, but that this is frequently overridden by trochaic (stressed – unstressed) compounds. I should now compare that to what Profs Mair and Liberman have kindly referenced here.

November 10, 2017 @ 6:58 am

To continue with the "ti" example above, that is why the "t" has palatalised to /tʃ/ or /ʃ/ in "question" or "nation" before what was originally a high front vowel t…

Ok so my example here isn't a great one in English because the palatalisation had already happened before the borrowing and we just borrowed the spelling convention! In any case, the general point is the same…

Rodger C said,

November 10, 2017 @ 9:41 am

when a student read "Liu I" as "Leeoo One"

Any relation to Malcolm the Tenth?

November 10, 2017 @ 2:00 pm

@Chris Button: The palatalization of /t/ to /s/ in "nation" had already happened when English got the word (hence Middle-English spellings like "nacyon"), but the further palatalization of /s/ to /ʃ/ had not. Words with "stion" like "question" did not have phonological palatalization when they entered English; the preceeding /s/ had a protective effect on the following /t/. In modern French, these words have /sj/ and /tj/ respectively.

November 10, 2017 @ 2:26 pm

Good point – thanks for clarifying! That explains the different /tʃ/ or /ʃ/ reflexes in English (I actually speak pretty decent French so should really have caught that one myself)

Following on from that, do you have any idea why "bastion" and by extension the name "Sebastian" resist palatalisation in British English (they tend to palatalise regularly in North American English)? Could it simply be down to low frequency use of the word "bastion" which in turn influences the pronunciation of the name?

November 10, 2017 @ 4:45 pm

Now that I have this mulling around in my head, I bet it was the other way round with the name "Sebastian" being the exception (due to it being a name and perhaps having a convoluted route into English) and then influencing the noun "bastion" due to the homophony.

Jefferson DeMarco said,

November 12, 2017 @ 7:56 pm

I have just begun an informal study of MSM on my own using an app called Memrise. One of the strengths of this app is that it has videos of a wide variety of native speakers saying the phrases we have been learning. I was amazed at how different the exact same words sounded from speaker to speaker. It doesn't take you very far, but seems pretty good for an introduction.

November 12, 2017 @ 8:45 pm

@Jefferson DeMarco

Thanks! Sounds interesting. What you write complements another post I'll be making about these issues on Tuesday or Wednesday.

Can you give us a link to a website describing this app?

RSS feed for comments on this post

Follow us on Twitter

Archives [+/–].

• February 2024
• January 2024
• December 2023
• November 2023
• October 2023
• September 2023
• August 2023
• February 2023
• January 2023
• December 2022
• November 2022
• October 2022
• September 2022
• August 2022
• February 2022
• January 2022
• December 2021
• November 2021
• October 2021
• September 2021
• August 2021
• February 2021
• January 2021
• December 2020
• November 2020
• October 2020
• September 2020
• August 2020
• February 2020
• January 2020
• December 2019
• November 2019
• October 2019
• September 2019
• August 2019
• February 2019
• January 2019
• December 2018
• November 2018
• October 2018
• September 2018
• August 2018
• February 2018
• January 2018
• December 2017
• November 2017
• October 2017
• September 2017
• August 2017
• February 2017
• January 2017
• December 2016
• November 2016
• October 2016
• September 2016
• August 2016
• February 2016
• January 2016
• December 2015
• November 2015
• October 2015
• September 2015
• August 2015
• February 2015
• January 2015
• December 2014
• November 2014
• October 2014
• September 2014
• August 2014
• February 2014
• January 2014
• December 2013
• November 2013
• October 2013
• September 2013
• August 2013
• February 2013
• January 2013
• December 2012
• November 2012
• October 2012
• September 2012
• August 2012
• February 2012
• January 2012
• December 2011
• November 2011
• October 2011
• September 2011
• August 2011
• February 2011
• January 2011
• December 2010
• November 2010
• October 2010
• September 2010
• August 2010
• February 2010
• January 2010
• December 2009
• November 2009
• October 2009
• September 2009
• August 2009
• February 2009
• January 2009
• December 2008
• November 2008
• October 2008
• September 2008
• August 2008
• [Posts before 4/8/2008 are here ] [Search old posts here ]

Blogroll [+/–]

• "Spoken language expert’s exuberant life of science"
• …And read all over
• A Linguist Goes to Law School
• A Roguish Chrestomathy
• A Walk in the WoRds
• A Way With Words
• Alex's phonetic thoughts
• All Things Linguistic
• Anggarrgoon
• Archival Sounds (British Library)
• Arrant Pedantry
• Ask the League of Nerds
• Babel's Dawn (Edmund Blair Bolles)
• Bad Language
• BadLinguistics (Pauline Foster)
• Between the Lines with Edwin Battistella
• Bradshaw of the Future
• Bremer sprachblog
• Building Rapport
• Career Linguist
• Child's Play
• Citizen sociolinguistics
• clinicallinguistics
• Coby Lubliner's Blog
• Cognition And Language Lab
• Colorless Green Ideas
• Conjugate Visits
• DCblog (David Crystal)
• Degelka af soomaaliga
• Descriptively Adequate
• dialect blog
• Dictionary Evangelist
• Dictionary Society of North America
• Double-Tongued Dictionary
• Ed Absurdum
• Eggcorn Database
• Endangered Languages and Cultures
• English, Jack
• Epea Pteroenta
• Eternally Stressed Semanticist
• Everything You Know About English Is Wrong
• Evolving English
• Far Outliers
• Found in Translation
• Freemorpheme
• Fully (sic)
• Good Reason
• Gordon P. Hemsley
• Greater Blogazonia
• Hanzi Smatter 一知半解
• Harmless Drudgery
• HeadsUp: The Blog
• https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/spoken-language-expert-s-exuberant-life-of-science-20220916-p5birk.html
• Isabella Massardo Copy & Translation
• Jabal al-Lughat
• John Wells's Phonetic Blog
• JoshMillard.com
• Langguj Gel
• Language Evolution
• Language Geek
• Language Hat
• Language Is The People's
• Language Jones
• Language Trainers Blog
• Language: A Feminist Guide
• Lathophobic Aphasia
• LAWnLinguistics
• LGSA Fledgelings
• Lingformant
• Lingua Franca
• Linguaphiles
• Linguistics Anonymous
• Linguistrix
• Literal-Minded
• Living Languages
• Logophilius
• Making Noise and Hearing Things
• Matjjin-nehen
• Mental Floss (language section)
• Metrolingua
• Michael Erard
• Motivated Grammar
• Naked Translations
• Natural Language Processing Blog
• Noncompositional
• NPR code switch
• Office Natural Language Team Blog
• Omniglot – The Blog
• Oxford Etymologist
• Ozarque's Journal
• Peter Harvey, Linguist
• phonoloblog
• Pinyin News
• Podictionary
• Polyglot Conspiracy
• Polyglot Vegetarian
• Polysyllabic (Karl Hagen)
• Popular Linguistics
• Proper Words in Proper Places
• Replicated Typo
• Ryan's linguistics blog
• Sauvage Noble
• Schnaufblog
• Sentence First
• Separated by a Common Language
• Sesquiotica (James Harbeck)
• Strong Language
• Stæfcræft & Vyākaraṇa
• Superlinguo
• Talk Wordy to Me
• Talking Brains
• Technologies du Langage
• Tenser, said the Tensor
• That Munanga Linguist
• ThatWhichMatter
• The Babbel Blog
• The Diacritics
• The Engine Room
• The Greenbelt
• The Ideophone
• The Language Guy
• The Lexicographer's Rules
• The Ling Space
• The Lingua FIle
• The Lousy Linguist
• The mashed radish
• The Ramblings of a Proto-linguist
• The Stone and the Shell
• The Virtual Linguist
• The Visual Linguist
• The Web of Language
• The Zero Morpheme
• Throw Grammar From the Train
• Transient Languages & Cultures
• Translate This!
• Val Systems
• Vocalized/Vocalised (Lauren Hall-Lew)
• Web-Translations
• Word Journal
• Word Routes
• Wordlustitude
• Wordnik blog
• Words Are Delicious
• Words from Sweden
• Words to the Wise
• You Don't Say

Powered By WordPress