https://orcid.org/0009-0004-4179-2224
In English literature, literary dialects play a pivotal role in portraying the diversity of social, ethnic, and gender identities. These identity markers create a distinct fictive voice for the characters, reflecting their unique backgrounds and cultural contexts. Translating literary dialects requires not only rendering the text into the target language but also reconstructing cultural identities or relations within the new linguistic context. Dialect, Voice, and Identity in Chinese Translation: A Descriptive Study of Chinese Translations of Huckleberry Finn, Tess, and Pygmalion by Yu Jing marks a pioneering contribution to descriptive translation studies of dialects in English novels and dramas. Through a comprehensive descriptive analysis of the corpus compiling 277 Chinese translations from 1931 to 2020, this book delves into the Chinese translations of the African American Vernacular English (AAVE), Dorset dialect, and Cockney over the past century. The focus is to reveal how the various identities embedded in literary dialects have been negotiated, redefined, and constructed in China.
The book under review consists of eight chapters. From Chapters 1 through 4, Yu provides the research background, literature reviews, and a comprehensive descriptive analysis of the corpus under research. The section from Chapters 5 through 8 comprises three individual case studies of Huckleberry Finn, Tess, and Pygmalion, followed by a conclusion.
Chapter 1 introduces the identity of “Others.” Distanced from the standard language of the mainstream community, dialect is viewed as the voice of difference and the representation of otherness. Dialect translation is thus the reproduction of otherness, in which translators should create the domestic “Others” in the target culture from the foreign “Others” in the source culture. Also, this book pioneers in including the investigation of the standard language (“Us”) into dialect (“Others”) translation. The translator must also address the interaction between dialect and the standard language in the source texts.
Chapter 2 reviews previous studies on literary dialect and provides the theoretical framework. Chapters 3 and 4 offer general and detailed descriptive studies of the translation corpus under research. Chapters 5 to 7 conduct a micro-level descriptive study by presenting three case studies.
In investigating the reconstruction of social and ethnic identities in Huck, Yu identifies the social hierarchy from AAVE in the lower register to the Southern white dialect and then to the Standard American English in the higher register. The Chinese version gives an upward linguistic modification to Huck’s and Jim’s characters by using the colloquial and vulgar varieties to portray Huck as a mainstream character who partakes in rebellious teenage adventures and Jim as a more confident and eloquent mature adult. The Chinese version also eliminates the standard language variety, symbolising Huck’s rebellion against the hypocrisy and cruelty of upper-class society. The translators use register varieties to reverse the social hierarchies and power structures in the source text, constructing the ethnic “Others” in the source culture as the “better Us” in the target culture.
In the construction of social identities in Tess, the cultural in-betweenness of the heroine is symbolised by her two voices, the Dorset dialect and Standard English. But Tess’s bilingual skills are fallible, for she keeps resorting to her native Dorset dialect at times of anxiety or distress. This reveals the class indeterminacy that results in her final downfall. However, the target texts give Tess a linguistic elevation by presenting her as a good speaker of both the dialect and Standard English. Such voice elevation perfectly matches her canonised characterisation established in China, where she has been embraced as a representative of the oppressed working class.
When investigating the reframing of Eliza’s gender identity in Pygmalion, Yu indicates that Eliza’s Cockney was engendered in the source text, for her voice differed from other characters with recurring emphatic tags and exclamations. Despite this, in the source text, the contrast between Eliza and Higgins was fundamentally social, between Cockney and Standard English. Lin Yutang’s 1945 translation turned Cockney into an idiolect of a flower girl by contrasting a woman who knows not to speak appropriately and a group of men who know perfectly how to express themselves. However, Yang Xianyi’s 1956 translation blurred Eliza’s gender identity by giving her an elevated voice and empowering her morally and socially. Such negotiation reflects the feminist agenda advocated by the mainstream ideology in China in the 1950s.
As Yu admits in Chapter 8, the limitation of this book lies in its risk of oversimplifying translator behaviours. It creates a dichotomy by categorising the “pioneers” and “followers” translators, but translator behaviours should be much more complex. How translators with diverse backgrounds and agendas contribute to identity negotiation remains to be further explored by future studies.
In conclusion, Yu’s book offers an innovative research perspective on translating literary dialects, exemplifying the integration of quantitative corpus data with descriptive qualitative analysis of identity negotiation. This book contributes to revealing the negotiation of the ethnic identity in Huck, the social identity in Tess, and the gender identity in Pygmalion. Through linguistic modifications, translators reshape characters’ voices to challenge or reinforce social hierarchies and power dynamics. Such nuanced portrayal enhances the readers’ understanding of intercultural communication by showcasing how language reflects and shapes identity, offering insights into how cultural nuances are navigated and interpreted across different contexts and audiences. This book is recommended for readers interested in English classic literature, comparative literature, corpus-linguistic studies, and corpus-based descriptive research, as well as those interested in branches of translation studies, including cultural studies, gender studies, socio-historical research, and reception studies.