Generic sentences (Toolan, 1998) are also clashes in the narrative. The generic sentence
seems like a typical pure narrative, asserting something to be a general and timeless truth; when they assert something we find very questionable, there is always an absurdity with regard to its content. Toolan defines generic sentences as:
Sentences that assert something to be a general truth, typically timelessly true (i.e. true through out time) … the ‘truth’ asserted is predicted not of a specific individual, but of a whole set of things, which is also an open (or potentially open) set of things … Additionally, grammatically, generic sentences are typically in the simple present tense (the tense usually used for timeless truth). (Toolan, 1998: 59)
Generic sentences can be highly partial, particular, and questionable in some contexts. Their format makes them look like unquestionable universal truths; while they may on occasion entail quite questionable content. Some generic sentences embedded in literary text are used to interpret ironic tones. In such cases, the reader initially accepts that a statement is true, but then realizes that this generic sentence expresses great foolishness or prejudice. Thus, in the emerging context, we can assume the narrator is intending irony. A renowned generic sentence is the first paragraph of Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen: “It is truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife”, which is considered to be a bitter irony. When Isabel Archer thinks “It is the essence of any
155 marriage to be open to criticism” and “One’s cousin always pretended to hate one’s husband” in Henry James’s Portrait of a Lady, these generalizations say little more than that Isabel is fallible and blind, and that is all (Toolan, 1998).
Example 6
The source text is:
他的学说是：凡尼姑，一定与和尚私通；一个女人在外面走，一定想引诱野男人；一男一女在那里讲话， 一
定要有勾当了。(Lu Xun, 1921: Chapter 4)
Yang’s translation is:
His view was, “All nuns must carry on in secret with monks. If a woman walks alone on the street, she must want to seduce bad men. When a man and a woman talk together, it must be to arrange to meet.” (Yang, 2000: 51)
Leung’s translation is:
As for the nuns, according to his own theory, they were sure to have clandestine relations with the monks. When a woman wandered about, she was sure to have it in mind to entice a “loose” male. Whenever a man and a maid conversed alone, there certainly was a matter of dark secrecy. (These were Ah Q’s extraordinary musings.) (Leung, 1946: 69)
156
All nuns, as he saw it, were having affairs with monks; any woman walking the streets had designs on strange men; any man or woman in conversation, wherever they were, must be up to no good. (Lovell, 2009: 94)
These sentences can be considered as generic sentences since they assert “something to be a general truth, typically timelessly true” (Toolan, 1989: 59). 凡尼姑，一定与和尚私通 (All nuns
must be carrying on in secret with monks) is to interpret a general truth – although it is a so- called “general truth” – that nuns are always in relationships with monks. All and must underscore the generality and unquestionableness of the statement. Analogously, the following two sentences are generic sentences. This theory is quite certain and general to all those people, giving readers an assertion. Looking at all the evidence and thinking about whether these generic claims look reasonable, the reader decides that they are not reasonable, and that they are the creations of Ah Q’s sex-crazed but innocent mind!
Yang’s translation preserves the generalness of the original sentence, by keeping the evaluative devices all and modal verb must. More importantly, Yang uses the simple present tense (the tense usually used for timeless truths) to stress its certainty and exaggerate Ah Q’s absurdity further. Leung is devoid of those modal signs, instead, he uses were sure to, was
sure to and there certainly was, which lessen the strength of modality. Moreover, he uses the
simple past tense which constantly reminds readers that they are just a set of circumscribed views of stupid Ah Q. What is more inexplicable is that Leung adds that These were Ah Q’s
extraordinary musings; because of this expression, the irony of the original text is almost
pruned out. Lovell’s translation is smooth, yet she uses the simple past tense, which lessens the irony emanating from this generic sentence. To sum up, Yang’s translation might be better because it maintains Lu Xun’s artful technique, with regard to generic sentences.
157 4.5 Conclusion
The study in this chapter shows that the literary translator’s decisions often do affect the quality of the transferred narrative and further affect the target readers’ grasp of the attitude of the original author. Textual analysis of the translations reveals that most problems in the rendering of the narrative discourse and authorial attitude are caused by seemingly minor details such as the translation of the character’s deixis, expressive lexis, modal words, tense, and even the punctuation, all of which are clear markers of the Bakhtinian mix of voices in the text. Lu Xun uses a wide range of voice-merging resources – Free Indirect Discourse, heteroglossia, parody, and generic sentences – to convey irony mainly. These devices share a common feature, that is, a discrepancy between the structure which seems to be pure narrative and the content which is pertinent to the oddness or abnormality of the character. This discrepancy, however, turns out to be too often invisible in the translations.
Scrutinizing the three English translations, I have found that generally speaking Lovell maintains the original subtlety much better than the other two. Her translation hints that she is aware of the foregrounded features, such as the Confucian-Mencian proverbs in Classical Chinese, and she offers skilful target-language compensations, even though she sometimes fails to reproduce the heteroglossia. The three translators – including Lovell – show their inconsistency in maintaining these techniques, as the following quotation from Bassnett underscores: “It is difficult to see what the criteria behind the English translations were, for there are so many inconsistencies” (Bassnett, 2002: 114).
With regard to the strategy of translating these tricky and implicated mixed voices, I highly recommend direct translation – for instance having FID where the original has FID. The
158 literal translation is feasible in that most features are universal, i.e. this technique works in roughly the same way in both Chinese and English; however, there are linguistic differences such as no tenses and some ambiguous reflexive pronouns in Chinese, which require the translators to be flexible in their approach according to the context of the source text. When there are linguistic and cultural differences, for instance concerning heteroglossia, I suggest creative translation to foreground the features and to trigger the readers’ curiosity, and then a footnote might be added.
So far I have discussed the translations of metaphors, Free Indirect Discourse, heteroglossia, parody, and generic sentences in the 《阿 Q 正传》 (The True Story of Ah Q), where all these in certain contexts can convey Lu Xun’s ironic tone. In the following chapter I will turn to Chinese translations of Joyce’s “Two Gallants” and “The Dead”, and will focus on a number of different desirable qualities in the translated literary texts, relating to the originals’ foregrounded repetitions and their striking transitivity patterns.
159 CHAPTER FIVE
REPETITION AND TRANSLATION
5.1 Introduction
It is not difficult to appreciate the significant position of repetition, on all linguistic levels, in literary language. The concept of repetition is deeply rooted in Western thought; it starts with Plato whose treatment of repetition renders the things of the world as copies of a higher reality and makes the “world as icon” (Deleuze, 1969, in Miller, 1982: 248). Plato’s idea about repetition with linguistic manifestation is on the philosophical level. My focus is on the linguistic level, especially, on lexical repetition and phonetic repetition. I will investigate what functions repetition has and how to maintain the functions in literary translation.