Translatorial voice through modal stance

A corpus-based study of modality shifts in Chinese-to-English translation of research article abstracts

Bibliographic Data

ID4093967
AuthorsYueyue Huang (0000-0003-1864-0367), Dechao Li (0000-0001-6312-6581)
Year2023
Volume295
Pages103610
Publication date2023-11-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueLingua (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0024-3841 • E-ISSN: 1872-6135
PublisherElsevier BV (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1016/j.lingua.2023.103610
OpenAlexW4387442861
LanguageEN
Citations received12
References cited74

Research on translation shifts, especially divergence in modality, that occur to English translations of Chinese research article abstracts is rare. The article aims to explore the linguistic changes in modality use, a linguistic device for expressing authors' evaluative judgement, in the abstracts of Chinese research articles and their English translations. By adopting a three-step analytical coding procedure from Systemic Functional Linguistics, the study analyses the cross-linguistic modality shifts in modal value, type and orientation in English translations of Chinese research article abstracts (RAAs) from both quantitative and qualitative perspectives. It is found that 1) quantitatively, a considerable number of modality shifts have been observed in translated RAAs on value, followed by type and orientation, in which the distributions present a stronger and more objectivised stance resulting from a loss of modality on low-value implicit proposition; 2) qualitatively, Chinese-specific lexical, syntactic, and textual factors are associated with modality shifts, including lexical ambiguity, "run-on" sentences, and implicit information structure. The findings provide evidence of how original authorial modal stance is influenced by translators and integrated into academic discourse. The study also paves the way for future investigations of possible variables (e.g., the speech-written mode) in modality shifts

Ambiguity · Divergence (linguistics · Epistemic modality · Judgement · Linguistics · Modal verb · Modality (human–computer interaction · Proposition · Value (mathematics · Computer Science · Discourse Analysis in Language Studies · Language, Metaphor, and Cognition · linguistics and terminology studies · Philosophy · Psychology · Artificial Intelligence

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