Building a Parallel Corpus for Chinese Folk Songs Translation Studies: A Case Study of Northern Shaanxi and Hua’er Folk Songs
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17507/tpls.1402.17Keywords:
parallel corpus, Northern Shaanxi and Hua’er folk songs, translation of Chinese folk songs into English, translation studiesAbstract
Folk songs, collaboratively created by the public and transmitted orally, have gained widespread popularity. The translation of folk songs primarily centers on lyrics translation, a subset of literary translation. Recent advancements in corpus technology have highlighted the significance of corpus-based research approaches for the analysis of literary translation. The corpus method, now employed as a hybrid research approach, enables the generation of quantitative data for descriptive translation studies. Scholars are increasingly using parallel corpora containing both the source text (ST) and the target text (TT) to explore translation universals across diverse texts. Despite the growing body of literature on the translation of Chinese folk songs, most studies have involved straightforward analyses of a limited number of translated texts without the utilization of quantitative approaches. This article aims to bridge this gap by presenting a prospective study on the creation of the Chinese-English Parallel Corpus of Northern Shaanxi and Hua’er Folk Songs (CEPCNSHFS). The study covers essential aspects such as sampling, corpus structure, corpora selection, and corpora processing. Moreover, to assess the practical utility of the CEPCNSHFS, a pilot study was conducted. The primary contributions of this article reside in the potential of the CEPCNSHFS to support diverse research topics, including the exploration of translation language characteristics, styles, and methods employed in translating Northern Shaanxi and Hua’er folk songs, both of which hold significant positions within Chinese folk song traditions.
References
Anthony, L. (2004). AntConc: A learner and classroom friendly, multi-platform corpus analysis toolkit. Proceedings of IWLeL, 7-13.
Atkins, S., Clear, J., & Ostler, N. (1992). Corpus design criteria. Literary and Linguistic Computing, 7(1), 1-16. https://doi.org/10.1093/llc/7.1.1
Baker, M. (1993). Corpus linguistics and translation studies implications and applications. Text and Technology: In Honour of John Sinclair (pp. 233). John Benjamins Publishing Company. https://doi.org/10.1075/z.64.15bak
Baker, M. (1995). Corpora in translation studies: An overview and some suggestions for future research. Target. International Journal of Translation Studies, 7(2), 223-243. https://doi.org/10.1075/target.7.2.03bak
Baker, P. (2010). Corpus methods in linguistics. In Research Methods in Linguistics (pp. 93-113). Bloomsbury Publishing.
Chiche, A., & Yitagesu, B. (2022). Part of speech tagging: A systematic review of deep learning and machine learning approaches. Journal of Big Data, 9(1), 1-25. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40537-022-00561-y
Guo, H. J., & Zhou, Q. Q. (2019). Ji yu ying-han ke pu ping xing yu liao ku de fan yi han yu “bei” zi ju yu yi yun te zheng yan jiu [A study of the semantic and rhyming features of translated Chinese “Bei” sentences based on an English-Chinese popular science parallel corpus]. Foreign Language Teaching Theory and Practice, (02), 83-90. https://doi:CNKI:SUN:GWJX.0.2019-02-012.
Guo, Q. (2020). Shan nan min ge yin yue xian zhuang yu yu liao ku jian she [Current status of folk song music in Southern Shaanxi and corpus construction]. Schools of Arts (01), 130-134+205. https://doi:CNKI:SUN:YSBJ.0.2020-01-022
Hu, K. B., & Tao, Q. (2009). Explicitation in the Chinese-English conference interpreting and its motivation-A study based on parallel corpus. Journal of PLA University of Foreign Languages, (04), 67-73. https://doi:CNKI:SUN:JFJW.0.2009-04-015
Koehn, P. (2005). Europarl: A parallel corpus for statistical machine translation. In Proceedings of Machine Translation Summit X: papers (pp. 79-86). Phuket, Thailand.
Lapshinova-Koltunski, E., Hardmeier, C., & Krielke, P. (2018, May). ParCorFull: A parallel corpus annotated with full coreference. In 11th Edition of the Language Resources and Evaluation Conference (pp. 423-428). European Language Resources Association (ELRA).
Li, L. B. (2009). Zai shi zhong ling ting ge de hui yin-Ping “Xi bei hui xiang” jian lun Shan bei min ge de fan yi [Listening to the echo of songs in poetry: A review of “Voice from the Northwest-Folk songs of Northern Shaanxi” and a discussion on the translation of Northern Shaanxi folk songs]. Jiaoxiang-Journal of Xi’an Conservatory of Music, (03), 78-82. https://doi:CNKI:SUN:JXXA.0.2009-03-021
Li, S. S. (2016). Cong chan shi xue kan Shan bei min ge wen hua fu zai ci de ying yi guo cheng-Yi Wang Hongyin “Xi bei hui xiang” wei li [Exploring the translation process of cultural-laden terms in Northern Shaanxi folk songs from the perspective of hermeneutics: A case study of Wang Hongyin’s “Voice from the Northwest”]. Intelligence, (13), 205-206. https://doi:CNKI:SUN:CAIZ.0.2016-13-178
Liu, Y. L. (2013). Wen hua chuan zhen zai shan bei min ge fan yi zhong de yun yong fen xi [Analysis of the application of cultural realism in the translation of Northern Shaanxi folk songs]. Youth Literator, (30), 119. https://doi:CNKI:SUN:QNWJ.0.2013-30-096
Sinclair, J. (1999). Corpus, concordance, collocation. Oxford University Press.
Scott, M. (2008). Oxford WordSmith tools 5.0 manual. Oxford University Press.
Tang, Z. J., & Ji, X. M. (2022). San mei lun zai Xintianyou ying yi shi jian zhong de ti xian [The Manifestation of the “Three beauties” theory in the English translation practice of Xintianyou]. Journal of Yulin University, (03), 26-30. https://doi:10.16752/j.cnki.jylu.2022.03.005
Wang, H. Y. (2009). Voice from the northwest-Folk songs of Northern Shaanxi. Culture and Art Publishing House.
Wang, H. Y. (2014). Chinese folk songs and their English translation. The Commercial Press.
Wang, K. F. (2004). Shuang yu dui ying yu liao ku: yan zhi yu ying yong [Bilingual parallel corpus: Development and application]. Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press.
Wang, K. F., Qin, H. W., Xiao, Z. H., & Hu, K. B. (2021). Zhong guo ying han ping xing yu liao ku yan jiu [Studies based on a super-sized English-Chinese parallel corpus]. Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press.
Wang, X. L. (2021). Building a parallel corpus for English translation teaching based on computer-aided translation software. Comput Aided Des Appl, 18(S4), 175-185. https://doi.org/10.14733/cadaps.2021.S4.175-185
Wu, Y. L. (2008). Zhong guo Hua’er tong lun [Comprehensive discussion on Chinese Hua’er songs]. Ningxia People’s Publishing House.
Wang, Z. B. (2021). Lyrics of Northern Shaanxi folk songs: Translation and exegesis. Nankai University Press.
Yin, L. P. (2013). Cong gong neng dui deng li lun kan ming ge de fan yi [Examining folk song translation from the perspective of functional equivalence theory]. Journal of Yan’an Vocational and Technical College, (05), 55-56. https://doi:CNKI:SUN:YAXB.0.2013-05-025
Yuan, W. (2020). Ji yu e-han zheng zhi wai jiao ping xing yu liao ku de duan yu dui ying dan wei chou qu yan jiu [Study on the extraction of phrase correspondence units based on the Russian-Chinese political and diplomatic parallel corpus]. Journal of PLA Foreign Languages Institute, (05), 38-45. https://doi:CNKI:SUN:JFJW.0.2020-05-006
Yang, X. L., & Caroline, E. K. (2016). Hua’er-Folk songs from the silk road. The Commercial Press.
Yang, X. L., Ding Y., Wang J., & Caroline, E. K. (2022). Voice from the silk road-Hua’er of northwest China. The Commercial Press.
Zhang, T. X. (2010). Ji yu Web jian suo de shanbei min ge yu liao ku she ji [Design of a Northern Shaanxi folk song corpus based on Web retrieval]. Modern Electronic Technology, (22), 38-39+41. https://doi:10.16652/j.issn.1004-373x.2010.22.040
Zhang, W. H. (2020). “Zhuangzi” han ying ping xing yu liao ku de chuang jian: tu jing yu yi yi [Creation of a parallel Chinese-English corpus for “Zhuangzi”: Approach and significance]. Foreign Languages and Cultures, (04), 125-132. https://doi:10.19967/j.cnki.flc.2020.04.012
Zhou, X. M. (2017). Zhuang zu dian ji duo yu ping xing yu liao ku jian she yu ying yong yan jiu [Construction and application research of multilingual parallel corpus of Zhuang ethnic classics]. Overview of Social Sciences, (10), 137-139. https://doi:10.16745/j.cnki.cn62-1110/c.2017.10.03