Critical Discourse Analysis Of Academic Translation

Martial arts fictions are a brilliant chapter in Chinese literature,and the research on martial arts fictions can help people comprehend Chinese culture more completely.Chen Pingyuan’s Qian Gu Wen Ren Xia Ke Meng(《千古文人侠客梦》)is a monograph on martial arts fiction that both combines appreciation and academics.Its translation plays a pivotal role in further expanding the international influence of Chinese academics.With the guidance of Critical Discourse Analysis,this thesis adopts Fairclough’s three-dimensional analytic framework and takes Qian Gu Wen Ren Xia Ke Meng and its English translation The Development of Chinese Martial Arts Fiction:A History of Wuxia Literature as an example to conduct a comparative study between the original and the translation from three aspects of textual analysis,discursive practice analysis and social practice analysis.This thesis proposes three research questions:(1)Are there any discrepancies between source texts and translated text in terms of textual description and discursive practice,what are they?(2)What textual effects do the above features in target text have realized?(3)What could be the possible factors that exert influence on the change of the above features in target texts?This research aims to examine the discrepancies between the original and the translation,discover the cause and effects of discrepancies in translation and verify the value of the application of CDA in academic translation.This thesis is divided into five chapters.Chapter one is an introduction,which presents the significance,purpose and method of the study.Chapter two is the literature review,which sorts out the research status of academic translation,translation studies from the perspective of CDA and the book Qian Gu Wen Ren Xia Ke Meng.Chapter three expounds the theoretical framework of this thesis,including Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis model and Halliday’s systemic functional grammar.Chapter four selects examples from Qian Gu Wen Ren Xia Ke Meng and its English translation to conduct a comparative study on the three levels of text,discourse practice and social practice.Chapter five summarizes the research findings of this paper and puts forward suggestions for future research.The research results show that the translation deviates from the original text to a certain extent in both textual and discursive practices.In terms of textual analysis,translators have different descriptions or expressions with different positions or inclinations for the same thing or object,which is mainly realized through lexical choice and deformation;in addition,the different choices of linguistic process in the translation also deviate from the original to a certain extent.In terms of discursive practice analysis,the translation fails to effectively achieve intertextual reference with the original text.In terms of manifest intertextuality,the translator confined to the characteristics of English academic discourse and influenced by the cultural differences between China and the West,adopting literal translation to convert the culturally rich canonical texts,martial arts novels,poems and idioms of the original text into standard and bland English,with the result of the vivid image and its metaphorical meaning of the original as well as the rhythmic rich language can’t be reproduced in the translation.In terms of constitutive intertextuality,in order to conform the academic norms of English,the translation omits paratexts,erases the markers of Chinese academic style and shifts the tone,resulting in the loss of Chinese academic style in the translation.It is found that the difference between Chinese and Western ideologies and the predominance of English affect the choice and usage of language forms,and the choice and use of language also affect the dissemination and understanding of ideology.This study effectively combines academic translation and linguistic theories to analyze the positive significance of critical discourse analysis in translation criticism.At the same time,it also enriches the research on academic translation and is conducive to the development of Chinese academic translation.