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УДК 81'33, 81'322.2
Вестник СПбГУ. Сер. 9. 2016. Вып. 1
Tao Yuan
OPERATING NORMS IN TRANSLATION ON THE BASIS OF RUSSIAN-CHINESE CORPORA: A CASE OF ЧТОБЫ CLAUSES IN RUSSIAN*
School of Foreign Languages, Shaanxi Normal University, 199, Chang'an Road (South), 710062, Xi'an, China
On the basis of a Russian-Chinese corpus (with a focus on academic texts of social sciences and the humanities), this paper explores operational norms governing translation of чтобы clauses that are typical to the Russian language. It concludes that: 1) there are three norms in their translation into Chinese: explicitation-implicitation norms, simplification-complication norms and domestication-foreignisation norms; 2) both explicitation and implicitation norms stand out in the translation of чтобы clauses into Chinese because formalisation disparities between Russian and Chinese are more striking than those between English and Chinese; 3) as for чтобы clauses, there are more simple sentences in the target texts (TT) than in the source texts (ST); there are more complex sentences in TT than in non-translational texts (NTT) because complex sentences are prevalent in Russian while simple sentences are common in Chinese; and 4) due to the structural features of the Russian language, foreignisation norms are more obvious than domestication norms respectively in the translation of чтобы clauses into Chinese. Refs 21. Tables 8.
Keywords: Russian-Chinese corpus; чтобы clauses; translation; operational norms in translation.
О НОРМАХ ПЕРЕВОДА СЛОЖНЫХ ПРЕДЛОЖЕНИЙ С СОюЗОМ ЧТОБЫ (НА МАТЕРИАЛЕ КОРПУСА РУССКОГО И КИТАЙСКИХ ЯЗЫКОВ)
Тао Юань
Шэньсийский педагогический университет, Китай, 710062, г. Сиань, ул. Чжананьлу, номер 199
В статье на основе корпуса русского и китайского языков исследуются нормы перевода сложных предложений с союзом чтобы. Делаются следующие выводы. Существует три вида переводческой нормы: нормы экспликации-импликации, нормы упрощения-усложнения и нормы одомашнивания-иностранизации. Соотношение экспликации и импликации при переводе предложений с союзом чтобы рассматривается в связи с тем, что различия между русским и китайским языками в это области более значительны, чем между английским и китайским. В переводных текстах больше простых предложений, чем в исходных, но в то же время больше сложных предложений, чем в непереводных, поскольку в русском языке сложные предложения используются чаще, чем в китайском. В связи со структурными особенностями русского языка при переводе предложений с чтобы более очевидно применение принципа иностранизации, а не одомашнивания. Библиогр. 21 назв. Табл. 8.
Ключевые слова: корпус русского и китайских языков, предложения с союзом чтобы, перевод, оперативные нормы перевода.
1. Introduction
As one of the most powerful conjunctions in Russian, чтобы can introduce clauses that, at a syntactic level, can serve as subject, predicate, compliment, attributive or predicative and, at a semantic level, may express purposes and denote reasons, manner or degree, typical of which are clauses expressing purposes, explanation, degree, manner, or restrictive clauses. Thus we can cover many issues related to the translation of complex clauses in Russian by embarking on the translation of clauses introduced by чтобы. The
* This research is supported by: 1. The National Social Science Foundation of China 2013 (Grant No. 13BYY026); 2. The First-Class Research Paper Training Funds by Shaanxi Normal University. © Санкт-Петербургский государственный университет, 2016
nmo6u-based clause is typical and representative among Russian complex sentences so that we may choose it as a good case in point when it comes to establishing translation norms — one of the issues facing corpus-based translation. In other words, we may cover the translation norms of Russian complex sentences by focusing on the nmo6u-based clause alone.
According to Chesterman, a translation norm is seen as "a kind of consensus of opinion about what [translation] should be like, how it should be done" [Chesterman, p. 3]. It can be "identified by studying regularities in the behavior of translators, in the product of such behavior, i.e. translated texts, and in the way translated texts are received. More specifically, a norm is a social notion of correctness or appropriateness, one that states (or expects) what acceptable translations should look like, thus influencing the decisions taken by translators" [Palumbo, p. 79]. It is a translation rule that results from social, historical and cultural restriction in translation practice. Toury divides translation norms into two basic categories: "preliminary norms and operational norms" [Toury, 1980, p. 58]. The former "have to do with two main sets of considerations which are often interconnected: those regarding the existence and actual nature of a definite translation policy, and those related to the directness of translation" [ibid, p. 58] while the latter "may be conceived of as directing the decisions made during the act of translation itself" [ibid, p. 58].
Operational norms are those guiding micro-contextual choices at a linguistic and cultural level and "affect the matrix of the text — i. e., the modes of distributing linguistic material in it — as well as the textual make-up and verbal formulation as such" [Toury 1980, p. 58]. In other words, they "govern the decisions taken during the act of translation as regards textual and linguistic aspects" [Palumbo, p.80], which is a function closely related to the current study — the translation of ^rno6u-introduced clauses into Chinese. This study focuses on syntactic translation of ^rno6u-introduced clauses; i.e., on the operational norms of such clauses from Russian into Chinese with the help of the Russian-Chinese parallel corpus (RCPC). This is because corpus-driven translation study benefits a great deal from "genuine data and text comparison" [Huang Li-bo, Zhu Zhi-yu, p. 29], which, on the basis of statistical analysis, makes research on translation norms more focused and targeted [Ibid, p. 28-35; Wang Ke-fei, 2012].
2. More Detailed Studies on Translation Norms
It is Gideon Toury who advanced the concept of translation norms [Toury, 1980]. In his eyes, norms can be interpreted "as the translation of general values or ideas shared by a community — as to what is right and wrong, adequate and inadequate — into performance instructions appropriate for and applicable to particular situations, specifying what is prescribed and forbidden as well as what is tolerated and permitted in a certain behavioral dimension" [Toury, 1995, p. 55]. According to Hermans, translation norms affect not only translators' choices when dealing with source texts and target texts but also the rules (conventions) and regularities from cultural context in broad sense as well as their influences on translation behavior [Hermans, 1999, p. 73-74]. Baker once hypothesized that social culture produced impact on translation norms and demonstrated this hypothesis by comparing and analyzing the translation of loan words "in a limited corpus of translations of modern, non-literary English texts in a variety of languages" [Baker, 1993] such as French, Arabic and Japanese.
Studies on corpus-based translation norms in China have also been conducted in recent years. Hu Xian-yao in his doctoral thesis has analyzed both operational norms and expectation norms1 and built up the basic hypothesis regarding the linguistic features of translated novels from the lexical and syntactic perspectives [Hu Xian-yao, 2006]. Based on his observations that there are more notional words in translated novel corpus than in original novel corpus, he confirmed that the operational norms the translators adopt indicate a trend toward conventional expectation norm2 [Hu Xiao-yao, 2008]. Hu Kai-bao, with the help of a corpus of transcriptions of Chinese-English conference interpreting, made an analysis of such translational norms as explicitation vs implicitation, simplification vs complication, and weakening vs strengthening in press conference interpreting as well as the reasons underlying such norms [Hu Kai-bao, 2012, p. 738-750].
Literature review helps us find that relevant studies focus overwhelmingly on English to Chinese translation (interpreting), or to French, Arabic and Japanese. No research has covered the corpus-based translation norms of the Russian language, not to mention the descriptive, corpus-based research on norms governing Russian-to-Chinese translation, two languages that exhibit great grammatical disparities. In addition, the greater disparities there are between two languages, the more clearly the universal features of translation practice can be demonstrated. Consequently, this paper, on the basis of self-compiled Russian-Chinese parallel corpus, will take an example of ^rno6u-introduced clauses to answer the following questions:
• What are the operational norms for translation of ^rno6u-introduced clauses from Russian to Chinese?
• What are the underlying reasons for those operational norms that translators followed?
3. Methodology 3.1. Self-compiled Russian-Chinese Parallel Corpus
This research is based on the Russian-Chinese Parallel Corpus (RCPC) with a focus on academic texts of social sciences, and the humanities, the first of its kind in China, built by the author herself and her research team, which is supported by the Social Science Foundation of China.
Corpus development includes the following operations [Tao Yuan, Zakharov, 2015, p. 65-75]:
(1) Filling in data and metadata fields.
(2) Text segmentation by paragraphs and data import into a parallel corpus.
(3) Segmentation and annotation of the Chinese words. First, software ICTCLAS2010 is used to auto-segment Chinese and annotate the part of speech of Chinese words (with accuracy of 70-80%); then we proofread the segmented and annotated version (with 100% accuracy).
(4) Text alignment by sentences. The first stage of alignment by sentences in the corpus is
1 Expectation norms refer to the norms a translator adopts to meet the expectation of target text readers, i.e., the conception of what a translation should be within a socio-cultural community.
2 Conventional expectation norm means the norm that a translator adopts to make the translated version more like the target language.
conducted automatically using the corresponding function of ParaConc (the alignment accuracy is 60-70%). The second stage consists of manual correction of errors (100%).
(5) Loading. On completion of alignment using ParaConc tools, texts are loaded into the concordance database. For this purpose, interface options are selected in the following order: File-Export-Export corpus files; the loading is then performed.
The corpus consists of two parts: the Russian-Chinese Parallel Corpus and the Non-translational corpus of Chinese Academic Texts. The former includes four sub-corpuses: Politics and International Relations Corpus, Literary Theory Corpus, Translation Theory Corpus and Linguistic Corpus. The corpus will be supplemented with Management Science Corpus, History Corpus and Culture Corpus in the near future. The corpus begins with 5 million words.
The current research is based on two sub-corpora: Politics and International Relationships Corpus and Linguistics Corpus (detailed information is presented in Table 1).
Table 1. Two Sub-corpora
Parallel corpus Non-translational corpus
Russian words Chinese words Samples Chinese words Samples
Politics and International Relationships Corpus (PIRC) 418,100 710,856 4 657,718 4
Linguistics Corpus (LC) 568,738 855,326 3 795,546 4
Total Tokens (TT) 986,838 1,566,182 7 1,453,264 8
Table 1 shows us that in two sub-corpora, the Russian words, the Chinese words and the Total Tokens are approximately equal in number; so are the Total Tokens (Chinese words) in Parallel Corpus and Non-translational Corpus (1,566,182 and 1,453,264). By so doing we can make the data elicited from these corpora comparable.
According to the generally accepted research method about translation norms for sentence translation [Huang Li-bo, 2007], all syntactic patterns in the corpora should be included in the discussion and calculation in the corpus-based research. The current research focuses its attention on the translation of чтобы-introduced clauses mainly because:
(1) As mentioned in the introduction, чтобы, a common Russian conjunction, works well to introduce many clauses; therefore, чтобы-introduced clauses translation is chosen to illustrate highly representative translation norms/
(2) With the help of Wordlist software, we know that чтобы ranks 7th in the selected corpora of 2,5 million tokens when it comes to the word frequency, which may offer the researcher a large reserve persuasive and convincing results.
(3) Study on translation norm with the case of чтобы-introduced clauses is a study in translation norm from the micro perspective. Compared with that from the macro perspective, the previous studies from the micro perspective were usually conducted on a small-scale corpus with lower reliability while the current study is on a corpus of 2.5 million tokens, in which чтобы-introduced clauses amount to 359 that outnumbers samples in the previous studies. Accordingly, the conclusion may be convincing.
3.2. Procedure
As mentioned earlier, translation norms can be classified as expectation norms and operational norms [Hu Xiao-yao, 2006]. As for the former, we may adopt both an "external text approach"3 and an "internal text approach". As for operational norms, we may adopt an "internal text approach", an approach to exploring the micro linguistic features or characteristics that lie in the text itself so as to work out the translation norms for such texts. This paper adopts the latter approach for it mainly dwells on operational norms for translation of complex clauses from Russian to Chinese. Meanwhile, it follows the universally-accepted procedure of corpus-based translation study [Huang Li-bo, 2007]: hypothesis ^ data elicitation ^ data analysis ^ hypothesis confirmation.
Hu Xian-yao once put forward five operational norms for fiction translation in his doctoral thesis: parataxis vs. hypotaxis, explicitation vs. implicitation, simplification vs. complication, normalization vs. deviation and sanitization vs. contamination [Hu Xiao-yao, 2006]. On the basis of the features of translation of complex clauses (Russian-Chinese), features of the two languages and styles of academic texts, as well as the theories about translation universals such as exlpicitation, implicitation and simplification [Baker, 2001], this paper tries to build up the following hypothesis of the operational norms about translation of the чтобы-introduced clauses from Russian to Chinese: explicitation vs. implicitation, simplification vs. complication and domestication vs. foreignization.
Explicitation means to make the information implied in source texts clear in the target texts by means of adding some conjunctions or explanatory words in the course of translation. Implicitation tries to make the information, which is expressed explicitly by grammatical or lexical devices in the STs, implicit in the TTs with the help of word orders, semantic devices or contexts. Simplification attempts to convert complex sentences in STs into simple ones in TTs while complication does the opposite. Domestication, "a global strategy of translation aimed at producing a transparent, fluent style in the TL, entails translating in a transparent form felt as capable of giving access to the ST author's precise meaning" [Palumbo, 2009, p. 38]. Foreignization, the opposite strategy of domestication, aims at rendering ST conspicuous in the target text [ibid, p. 48].
After building up the hypotheses of the operational norms, we embark on data elicitation with such tools as ParaConc, WordSmith Version 6 in the hope of finding that translators adopted:
(1) the explicitation-implicitation norms — by means of analyzing the чтобы translation examples elicited from the corpora;
(2) the simplification-complication norms — with the help of counting the proportion of TT simple sentences to чтобы-introduced complex clauses in the source texts;
(3) the domestication-foreignization norms — by virtue of comparing the number of {W(yibian, so as to) or "ИЙ" (yi mian, lest)4 in the parallel corpus with those in the non-translational corpus.
3 External text approach is an approach to taking into account such factors that may affect translation norms as socio-cultural, ideological, cognitive, and other paralinguistic elements that lie outside the text itself.
4 and are all the Chinese counterparts of чтобы.
4. Results and discussion
4.1. Chinese version of чтобы and expUcUation-impUcitation norms
The software ParaConc helps us determine the frequency of чтобы and that of its Chinese equivalents in RCPC as in Table 2.
Table 2. Implicitation cases of Chinese version of чтобы and their proportion
(75.2 %) (24.8 %) -
Table 2 shows us that among 359 чтобы-introduced structures in ST, there are 6 Chinese equivalents with their own frequency in TT respectively, accounting for 75.2% of all the equivalents. However, we failed to figure out directly corresponding Chinese counterparts for 89 чтобыis, accounting for 24.8% of total чтобыis (359), which indicates that translators follow the implicitation norms in their translation of such чтобы-introduced clauses into Chinese. Two tentative reasons may underlie such phenomena.
1. Translation norms are closely related with the features of both source language and target language.
The disparity between the degree of formalization between Russian and Chinese outweighs overwhelmingly that between English and Chinese. At the syntactic level, there is a clear-cut division between a simple sentence and a complex sentence in Russian. It is also true regarding all complex clauses, and there is no overlap between any two kinds of Russian complex clauses [Tao Yuan, p. 43-46]. Each Russian complex clause is habitually introduced by set conjunctions. For instance, что/чтобы is usually used to introduce clauses for purpose while other conjunctions such as где, когда, так как are not qualified to do so. In the source text, many Russian complex clauses are introduced by чтобы without which clauses are not necessarily clauses.
However, the Chinese language is of parataxis, and the formalization degree is less than that of Russian. Rather than employing conjunctions, Chinese people can express their purposes through context, word orders and even semantic relationships. Some researchers on the Chinese language even posit that sense can determine grammar [Zhao, p. 173-179].
2. As mentioned above, чтобы can introduce clauses that may express purposes and denote reasons, manner, or degree or introduce restrictive clauses. However, there are no
corresponding and fixed Chinese equivalents for Russian complex clauses, particularly those expressing explanation and restrictive clauses. Purpose clauses are exceptional.
Consequently, translators didn't translate 89 чтобъш (24.8% of all чтобъш in ST) word-for-word in their Chinese version, since in their eyes чтобы serves only as a functional word which indicates that translators may possibly follow the norm of implicitation.
Among the Chinese equivalents of чтобы, "Ш T"(wei le; for/so as to)5 ranks the first in the frequency list. We attempt to investigate its Russian equivalents in the ST by back-retrieving with ParaConc so that we can have a clear picture of explicitation norms of translation of чтобы clauses. For example, if there is no чтобы or its synonym in the ST but many "-^T" in the TT, we may conclude that explicitation norms apply to this situation, which is demonstrated in Table 3.
Table 3. Explicitation cases of Chinese version of чтобы and their proportion
Chinese words Frequency Russian equivalents Frequency and proportion Explicitation frequency Explicitation ratio
чтобы 65 (52.6%)
цель/с целью 9 (10.3%)
за то/что... 5 (8.2%) (explicitation)
&7 97 по причине. 2 (5.2%) 11 11.3%
для чего 6 (8.2%)
за что 4 (7.2%)
No exact equivalents 6 (11.8%) (explicitation)
Table 3 shows that they follow the norms when they translate 3a mo, nmo... and others that have no Chinese equivalents with 11 "-^T", accounting for 11.3%. Two possible motivations may underlie translators' choice of the explicitation norm.
1) Explicitation, as one of the universalities of translated version, has been explored by many researchers who have focused on both intra-language explicitation and inter-language explicitation [Huang Li-bo, 2007; Tang Fang, Li De-chao, p. 442-453], among which is included the reverse-retrieval explicitation.6
2) "^T" can not only be used to translate given Russian lexical items as mentioned in Table 3, but also to convey certain grammatical meanings such as the 3rd case of Russian declensions (the dative case) which works as the indirect object in the grammatical category.
However, implicitation in Russian-Chinese translation and back-retrieval explicitation are more frequent than those in English-Chinese translation, which may be due to the disparities between languages themselves. Huang Li-bo reviewed Klaudy (1993, 1996) and Klaudy & Karoly (2005)7, 0veras (1998)8 and concluded that inter-language explicitation
5 "^T" can be translated as for, in order to, so as to, so that, etc.
6 Reverse-retrieval explicitation means that the explicitation hypothesis is proved by retrieving certain data related to an individual item from the TTs that are compared with that from the STs, a procedure that is reverse to the STs ^ the TTs data retrieval and comparison.
7 They focused their research on Hungarian-English (Russian) translation.
8 0veras conducted the research on Norwegian-English translation.
becomes more transparent when the SL is of high formalization degree while the TL is the opposite. Russian is a language of high formalization degree while Chinese is a language of low formalization degree, thereby making both explicitation and implicitation norms obvious in their translation.
4.2. Chinese version of чтобы and simplification-complication norms
As mentioned before, чтобы can introduce a variety of clauses and in this section we have chosen four kinds of clauses that are translated from the perspective of simplification norms because they are typical. In the following table we summarize the simplification norm translators adopt.
Table 4. Simplification cases of Chinese version of nmo6u-introduced clauses and their proportion
Clause Type Clause Number in ST Simple sentences in TT Simplification Ratio
Чтобы clauses Purpose clause 227 14 6.2%
Explanatory clause 57 29 50.9%
Restrictive clause 33 30 90.1%
Degree/Manner 43 2 4.7%
Total (Ratio) 350 75 21.4%
There are altogether 350 чтобы-introduced clauses of four categories in the ST according to Table 4. The simplification ratios are different with Restrictive clauses being the first (90.1%) and Degree/Manner clauses, the fourth (4.7%). The total ratio is 21.4%, indicating that simplification becomes transparent in Russian-Chinese translation and its underlying reasons follow.
1) Simplification is closely related to the structural disparities between Russian and Chinese complex clauses. Conjunction-introduced clause is the majority among all Russian complex ones. Therefore, conjunction becomes one important indicator to distinguish a simple clause and a complex one and can express different logical relationships in the Russian world such as purposes, explanation, restrictive relationships, manner/degree. On the contrary, in Chinese, logical relationships are often conveyed by means of word orders, embedding and word contraction which are often the indicators of a simple sentence in Chinese [Zhang Hui-sen, 2004]. Here is a case in point:
© нет же формы, чтобы его изобразить
2) Russian complex clauses can be categorised as structurally decomposed clauses (сложное предложение расчлененной структуры) and structurally non-decomposed ones (сложное предложение нерасчлененной структуры). The former indicates that the complex clause is related to the main clause while the latter means that the complex clause is related to given word in the main clause [Кожина, 1983]. The former is often converted into Chinese complex clauses while the latter — into Chinese simple ones. Among four types of чтобы-introduced clauses, purpose clauses and degree/manner clauses belong to the former while explanatory and restrictive ones — to the latter. Such facts justify different simplification ratios ranging from 4.7% to 90.1%. Here are two examples to illustrate this point:
® Но, чтобы решиться на такое противопоставление, организация должна обладать огромной силой (политической, социальной, а главное, экономической) (purpose clause)
ф ...проблема масштабного использования стратегий лежит не только в том, чтобы знать об их существовании и иметь возможность планировать соответствующие действия (explanatory clause)......"АШН^ДШ^Й^Ш^ШШ
In example ф, чтобы clause is structurally decomposed complex clause and converted into complex clause in Chinese, i.e., in example ф,
чтобы clause is structurally non-decomposed complex clause and converted into simple clause in Chinese, i.e.,
Because this paper focuses on the translation norms of чтобы-introduced clauses (complex clauses), translation of simple clauses is excluded. However, complication norms take place on the condition that the ST simple clauses are put into complex clauses; therefore, there exists no inter-language complication norms of translation but intra-language complication norms that become more transparent after we compare the frequency of four kinds of clauses in both TT and non-translational texts. Distribution of four kinds of clauses is listed in Table 5.
Table 5. Complication norms distribution of four clauses and their proportion
Clause Type Number (TT corpus) Number (Non-translational corpus) Complication Proportion of Complication
Purpose clause 308 289 19 6.2%
Explanatory (object) 286 279 7 2.5%
Restrictive (attributive) 55 49 6 10.9%
Degree/manner 153 140 13 8.5%
Total (proportion) 802 757 45 5.6%
By comparing Table 5 with Table 4, we found that four types of clauses in TT corpus in Table 5 outnumbered those in ST texts in Table 4 where чтобы-introduced clauses were translated into Chinese, which is mainly because each type of the clause may be introduced by conjunctions other than чтобы. For instance, degree/manner clauses can be introduced by both чтобы and так...что; restrictive clauses can also be introduced by который, что. We also noticed that the number of each type of the clauses increased in the TT corpus in Table 4, but in different size, which may be attributed to different frequency of each clause in Chinese. For example, the restrictive (attributive) clause is less used in Chinese because attributive clauses in a language of high formalization degree will be translated preserving its function as an attributive position rather than an attributive clause in Chinese, thereby resulting in the dramatic increase of the attributive position [Qin, p. 73-80]. That is why there exist fewer attributive clauses in the TT corpus (55) in Table 5.
Four types of clauses in the TT corpus outnumber those in the non-translational corpus with the difference being 45, which indicates the tendency of intra-lingual complication with the complication proportion at 5.6%. Of all the proportions, attributive clauses rank the first (10.9%) while objective clauses — the last (2.5%). We may claim that there are more complex clauses in the TT than in the non-translational corpus, which may result from the influence of the original texts in Russian. Besides, stylistic factors must be taken into account for all the texts in RCPC, which are ones of social sciences and humanities. Such texts are labeled as "scientific style", which is characterized by the logic and coherence of language at the syntactic level [Кожина, 1983]. Such features oblige authors of the original texts to choose complex clauses and translators (interpreters) are inevitably affected by such syntactic features, which make the complication norms more obvious in their translation (interpretation).
4.3. Domestication norms and foreignization norms
Since research on domestication and foreignization norms is conducted in reference to target language criterion, the current research will be carried out from the intra-lingual perspective, i.e., the domestication-foreignization norm hypotheses of чтобы clauses translation can be tested by three comparisons.
1) A comparison can be made of the number of "^T'\ ".ff" (the Chinese counterparts of чтобы) in the TT corpus with that in the non-translational corpus.
2) The second comparison is made of the number of " " S77"(the counterparts of чтобы...не...) in the TT corpus with that in the non-translational corpus.
3) The last comparison is made of the number of "Щ7" structure that is post-placed in the TT corpus with that in the non-translational corpus.
Table 6. The distribution of "Kffi" in two corpora
Number(TT corpus) Number(Non-translational corpus) Difference Difference ratio
MT 179 152 27 15.1%
65 55 10 15.4%
Table 6 shows us that there are 152 "^T" and 55 ".ff" in the non-translational corpus while 179 and 65 — in the TT corpus, respectively, with the difference as 27, 10 and the difference ratio being 15.1%, 15.4%, respectively. We believe that there exists a basic language principle in the non-translational corpus full of academic texts, which demonstrates the tendency of language norms; "Щ7" and ".ff" increase a lot in the TT corpus compared with those in the non-translational corpus, which supports the fact that translated version is influenced not only by the TL norm but also by the SL. In addition, the relationship of purpose can be conveyed by parataxis in Chinese. In Russian, such work must be done by conjunctions of which чтобы is typical. As a result, there are more "Ш7" 4 ".fM" in the target texts than in the non-translational texts and language in the TT features somewhat differently from that in the non-translational text, which tests the foreignization hypothesis.
Table 7. The distribution of " ......, ^77.....■" in two corpora
number (TT corpus) Number (Non-translational corpus) difference Difference ratio
50 43 7 14%
41 49 -8 19.5%
In Russian, чтобы as a conjunction can be collocated with не to express negation, which can be translated as "Д^" in Chinese. However, is a much formal word
in Chinese and is less used than ......» S77.....•" to express purpose.
Through non-translational texts, we find that there exists a translation norm concerning
the expressions of negation of purpose, i.e., there are 49 ......" ("S77......")
while 43 in the non-translational corpus. Nonetheless, it is the reverse in the TT
corpus, i.e., there are 41 "Ш7Ш±......."("S77.....■") while 50 — This can
also be accounted for by the influence of the STs on the TT for translators or interpreters, under the influence of source language features, they are prone to use more conjunctions than usual in their versions, thereby making language in the version different from the target language, which also tests the hypothesis of foreignization norm.
As a structure, "Щ7" plus a noun or predicate can be placed in front of a sentence
or after a sentence, with the latter regarded as post-positioned "Щ7......" structure. The
distribution of the structure is listed in Table 8.
Table 8. The distribution of post-positioned "^T.....•" structure in two corpora
Total "^7 " structure Post-positioned "^7......" structure Post-positioned ratio
Target texts corpus 179 33 18.4%
Non-translational corpus 152 21 13.8%
As mentioned above, in Chinese, "^7" can be placed in front of a sentence, and occasionally, after a sentence. In the latter case, " '^7' in fact, is not suitable according to the semantic relationship in the context but it is used because there exists in the sentence the implied efforts one has made or the subjective evaluation one has given" [Wang Yong-na, 2004, p. 21]. On the contrary, in Russian, чтобы-introduced clauses can be placed in front of a sentence or after a sentence, with the latter being used more frequently than the former.
Table 8 shows that in the TT corpus, there are 179 "^7" structures in total, among which 33 (18.4%) are post-positioned while in the non-translational corpus — 152 "Ш 7" structures in total, among which 21(13.8%) are post-positioned. The comparison demonstrates that "^7" structure is post-positioned more frequently in the TT corpus than in the non-translational corpus, which indicates again that under the influence of purpose clauses in Russian, there is a deviation of language in the version from the target language in terms of language features, which also proves the foreignization hypothesis of translation norms.
While we have tested the foreignization hypothesis, we have also found domestication norms governing the translation of чтобы clauses into Chinese. The version as a whole
shows the conformity to the Chinese language norms. The fact that one, without any knowledge of the Russian language, can understand texts of political science and linguistics translated from Russian, has undeniably tested the domestication hypothesis. However, three intra-lingual comparisons as mentioned above have shown that foreignization, one of the universals in the field of translation, stands out in the translation of чтобы clauses into Chinese.
5. Conclusion
By means of corpus-based translation methodology, this paper examined translation norms concerning чтобы-introduced clauses or чтобы-based structures on the basis of Russian-Chinese corpora with a focus on academic texts of social science and humanities.
According to the previous research on translation norms, this paper has put forward and proved three hypotheses.
1) With the help of data retrieval from ST-TT corpora and data comparison, we confirmed the explicitation norms while with the help of back-retrieval of data and their comparison — implicitation norms.
2) Inter-lingual comparison has helped to prove the simplification norms while intralingual comparison — the complication norms.
3) By data comparison of чтобы-introduced/based structures in the ST with their typical counterparts in the TT, as well as the intra-lingual comparison of post-positioned
"•^T......" structures in the TT with those in the STs that make up the non-translational
corpus, we confirmed the foreignization norms.
At the macro level, three norms exist in the translation of чтобы-introduced/based structures. However, there exist also nuanced disparities among norms themselves and even in each norm itself at the micro level:
1) explicitation-implicitation norms have shown us mainly the inter-lingual disparities while domestication-foreignization norms — mainly the intra-lingual disparities, and simplification-complexity norms — both;
2) within explicitation-implicitation norms, the implicit translation version outnumbered the back-retrieval explicit version.
3) within simplification-complexity norms, inter-lingual simplification of translation outnumbered intra-lingual complication of translation.
Чтобы-introduced/based structures are representative in the Russian complex sentences and research on their translation norms will provide some feasible research models for future research on translation norms in individualised complex sentences in a given language with the help of corpus-based Russian-Chinese complex sentence translation research.
There exists much room for improvement in this project. A good case in point is how to distinguish simple sentences from complex sentences in Chinese, as well as how to distinguish complex sentences themselves as mentioned in section 4.2. As for the categorization of many sentences in Chinese, there are no unanimously accepted criteria among scholars. This paper has just followed one scholar's categorization and our own understanding of complex sentences. Could this method be open to the charge of subjectivity?. Our analysis rested upon only academic texts of social sciences and
humanities. Does the research mode apply to the texts of other genres and subjects? These two questions will provide new motivation and opportunities for our further research.
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Статья поступила в редакцию 10 февраля 2015 г.
Контактная информация
Тао Юань — доктор филологических наук, доцент; [email protected] Tao Yuan — PhD, Associate Professor; [email protected]
