Archives

  • Oral History: An Approach for Translation History

    Author:Kaitong Song, Hongjun Lan

    Abstract: Different from documentary history, oral history focuses on the individuals or groups hidden behind mainstream history. By borrowing research methods from oral history, the study of translation history will further visualize and highlight the role of translator and translation practice in promoting historical development, which w...

    Column:Translation Studies   103-112   Details

  • Translating for Love, Conforming to Contexts: Taking Sidney Shapiro’s Translation Strategies as Examples

    Author:Songya Deng

    Abstract: Sidney Shapiro, a Jewish American, with the influence of his life experience and personality, voluntarily became a Chinese citizen and chose translation as his lifelong career to show the real China from his view. In his early life, his translation materials were often selected by the Foreign Languages Press. And after the translation of Outlaws of the Marsh, he began to write books and consciously introduce China to the world through his careful translation. With a moderate and rigorous translation style, Shapiro took into account both the cultural intention of the original work, the request of sponsors and the expectations of western readers, which made his Outlaws of the Marsh the most praised translation of the book and sets a good example for promoting Chinese literature to the world.

    Column:Translation Studies   114-123   Details

  • Studying from Source Text and Identifying Literary Talent in Popular Fiction: On the Idea of Patrick Hanan’s Creating by the Other with Textual Research

    Author:Yuting Ren

    Abstract: Many articles about English translation of Chinese literature focus on the translation rather than the translator. Researchers pay less attention to the sinologist’s life and enlightenment from his study and translations of Chinese literature. Patrick Hanan, a famous expert in Chinese classical novels, had devoted his life to the study of Chinese literature. His works, such as The Chinese Vernacular Story, The Invention of Li Yu and The Rise of Modern Chinese Novels, are unique in attention to textuel and narrative style, providing a new perspective for the study of Chinese literature. He translated nine romantic novels and presented the historical value of non-mainstream literature. Through the study of his life and works, the paper points out that we should learn from the successful experience of sinologists in spreading Chinese literature, and promote overseas Chinese literature and culture.

    Column:Translation Studies   124-134   Details

  • A Contrastive Study of the Prominence View and the Figure-Ground Theory

    Author:Yuxiang Qin, Dan Zhao

    Abstract: The prominence view and the figure-ground theory are related to each other because they both involve perceptual relations. However, they are not equal, and this results in their difference in superiority. The prominence view is a general principle of cognition and a basic way of thinking, and it is superior to the figure-ground theory in syntactic analysis for being economical in theory and capable of simplifying the analyzing process and providing systematic and reasonable explanations to related syntactic problems. The figure-ground theory, which has developed from the description of the perceptional relation between the two parts in the perceptional field, can very well illustrate the prominence relation between the things involved in the prominence view, but it is limited in its application in syntactic analysis because of the difficulty in determining figure and ground and the irreversibility of the perceptional relation between figure and ground.

    Column:Linguistic Studies   135-144   Details

  • A Critical Metaphor Contrastive Analysis of Chinese and American Renewable Energy News Reports

    Author:Yi Peng, Bei Luo

    Abstract: Within recent years, foreign and domestic studies of energy discourses have been in constant development, but little research is directed towards renewable energy discourses in terms of critical metaphor analysis. Based on the contrastive analysis of critical metaphors, as well as the self-constructed corpus on Chinese and American renewable energy news reports in the past ten years, this paper explores identical and different metaphors linked with these discourses, discloses origins of the identical and distinct metaphors, and points out that important factors leading to the same metaphors include the natural tendency of energy development, the responsibilities of China and America as major powers, and the commonalities of culture and thoughts between the two countries. The main reasons giving rise to correspondingly different metaphors involve the differences of ideology and social culture.

    Column:Linguistic Studies   145-156   Details

  • The Dawning and the Vanishing of Inspiration: A New Thematic Approach to Foster's The Road from Colonus

    Author:Shenyou Mei

    Abstract: As the most famous short story by Edward Morgan Forster, The Road from Colonus has been much studied in relation to Sophocles's Oedipus at Colonus. This essay, by identifying Coleridge's “Kubla Khan” as another important source text, argues that this Foster's is mainly about the dawning of inspiration as a testimony to the enormous power of the subconscious and the vanishing of inspiration due to the intervention of outsiders. An investigation into Forster's personal circumstances reveals his strong trust in inspiration, as well as his deep-seated anxiety about its vanishing in the absence of someone committed to the idea of “only connect.”

    Column:Literature and Culture Studies   001-011   Details

  • The Cultural Roles of Early American Fictional Spinster Detectives

    Author:Qiong Li

    Abstract: Anna Catherine Green's The Affair Next Door and The Circular Staircase and Mary Roberts Rinehart's The Circular Staircase create the earliest prototypes of spinster detectives in American literary history. These fictional images are in their nature self-contradictory: as detectives, they play the cultural role of upholding bourgeois morality and family ideals, but as single, autonomous women, they challenge the dominant discourse through their investigation of women's plight and their recasting of the image of the spinster. In their novels, Green and Rinehart endow the spinster detectives with the right to narrate in their own voices. Their narration not only highlights their roles in defending morality and women's rights, but also redescribes their characters and potential and subverts the Victorian prejudices governing sex, age, and marital status.

    Column:Literature and Culture Studies   012-020   Details

  • National Power and the Metaphor of Plague in Shakespeare's Coriolanus

    Author:Fang Yuan

    Abstract: Without any direct references of plague, Coriolanus is haunted by the metaphor of plague in which Shakespeare compares citizens' turbulence to the plague within. Analysing the historical evidence, the author finds that citizens' riots were more prevalent than the plague at that time. When Shakespeare wrote ...

    Column:Literature and Culture Studies   021-029   Details

  • The Other's Resistance to the British Empire's Spatial Politics in Barker's The Ghost Road

    Author:Tiantian Huo,Shidan Chen

    Abstract: The British postmodern writer Pat Barker's The Ghost Road juxtaposes colonial space, war space, and the war hospital, presenting a panorama of the British Empire's spatial politics, in which the Empire constructs the hierarchical spatial order in the colonial space through employing colonial violence, controls individuals in the war space through practicing state patriarchal ideology, and produces bare life through utilizing the mechanism of a state of exception in the war hospital. The ghost, representing the colonized, the dead soldier, and the patient in the war hospital, resists the British Empire's spatial hegemony by violating borders, being present, narrating,

    Column:Literature and Culture Studies   039-048   Details

  • Milton's "Critical Allusion": On Satan in Paradise Lost and the Heroes in Western Classical Epics

    Author:Yining Ma, Yuxiao Su

    Abstract: One of the most distinctive techniques of Paradise Lost, allusion, provides an interpretive approach to the nature of Satan. Milton alludes to the language, actions, and situations of heroes in Western classical epics, associating Satan with them. These associations, however, do not place Satan in the position of the hero in Paradise Lost. Rather, they set the traditional heroes as the standard against which Satan’s nature is measured. This article, therefore, reviews Milton's "critical allusion" in Paradise Lost and how it sheds light upon the interpretation of the pseudo-heroic nature of Satan. This approach has not been systematically studied in domestic academic circles. The present article first introduces the concept and function of "critical allusion." Then it points out that Milton's relation of Satan to such archetypal epic heroes as Achilles, Aeneas, and

    Column:Literature and Culture Studies   049-057   Details

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