GSTF International Journal of Law and Social Sciences (JLSS) Vol.2 No.2, April 2013
Reciprocal Signification and Reformulated Discourse
in the Translation of OguraHyakuninIsshu
Ke Tang
Department of Chinese Language and Literature
Fudan University
Shanghai, China [email protected]
Abstract—This essay attempts at an interdisciplinary investigation
into literary translation and postulates that the translation activity
is a process of signification of the sign systems of the target culture.
I shall attempt to instantiate and discuss the poetics of translation,
which views the translation works as stylistic and holistic texts.
Besides, the analysis of interlingual translation can serve as a key
to comparative poetics and study of universal literature. The
distinguished anthology of compiling Japanese waka Ogura
Hyakunin Isshu and the Chinese translation by Derun Liu can
serve as a desirable instance of analysis.
Keywords-interdisciplinary;
convention(keywords)
translation;
iconic;
indexical;
TRANSLATION AS RECIPROCAL SIGNIFICATION AND
REFORMULATED DISCOURSE
As C.S. Peirce states, all signification is but the translation
of a sign into another system of signs (Peirce IV: 127).
Likewise, the meaning of any linguistic sign is its translation
into some further alternative sign, either verbal or nonverbal.
Contrary to certain prejudices concerning the possibility of
translating literary texts, especially a poetic text, the capacity
for extralocalization and distancing potentially presents in
translation as interpretive trajectories in translation semiotics
(Petrilli 2007), rendering translation activity a dynamic part of
dialectic interaction among iconicity, indexicality and
conventionality. The interaction between interpretant signs (TL)
and interpreted signs (SL) in the translative process forms the
signifying and cognitive universe oriented by dialogism, alterity,
polyphony, polylogism, and plurilingualism, all of which are
essential properties of language and make possible critical
awareness, experimentation, innovation and creativity.
I.
To view translation in the particular vein of linguistics, the
meaning of any word or phrase is definitely a linguistic—or to
be more precise—a semiotic fact (Jakobson 1959), and
equivalence in difference is the cardinal problem of language
and the pivotal concern of linguistics. Anton Popovič (1971:
15–16) posits two levels of translation study, a
communicational and a textual. At the former level, Popovič
(1971: 28) perceives translation as a fact of interliterary
communication and employs the communicational model
developed by Jiři Levy, while he adapts it as:
Expedient — Text1 — Translator — Text2 — Recipient
This communicational model bears similarity to the
linguistic model of Jakobson (1960) and can be seen as a
modification of it. The communication and intervention
among the expedient (addresser 1), translator (addressee 1 and
addresser 2) and the recipient (addressee 2) are interactive and
dynamic in the translation activity. It is, therefore, a good
point to start our analysis.
Methodologically speaking, the theoretical framework on
which the following analysis is based resorts to a kaleidoscope
of semiotics, linguistics and poetics, each being a helpful tool
in providing a systematic modusoperandi. Besides, the essay
aims at demonstrating that the translation activity is a process
of reciprocal signification between the sign systems of the
source and the target culture, taking into account the cultural
aspects of a translation as a semiotic operation between
encoding and decoding in the discursive space.
Furthermore, translation of literary texts on the one hand is
an approach towards the appreciation of the literary world of
the source language; on the other hand, it is a means of literary
criticism, which delves into the domain of poetics. It enables
the translator and the reader to rethink their own literary norms,
to pay attention to the specific genres and text-codes that are
closely connected to their own conventions of literature. The
essay proposes that the target text must be seen as an integral
part of the target literature within the wider context of the
“rewriting” that constitutes the backbone of literary systems.
In this vein, translation studies can help counteract the
growing isolation of literary studies as a discipline (Lefevere
1985: 223). A desirable way of translation study is an
empirical approach based on the descriptive study of the way
translations function as part of a comprehensive literary
system (Hermans 1985). I shall attempt to instantiate and
discuss the poetics of translation, which views translation
works as stylistic and holistic texts. The analysis of
interlingual translation can serve as a key to comparative
poetics and study of universal literature, in that it provides
ample cases and the universal horizon for it.
I shall choose a distinguished anthology of compiling
Japanese waka OguraHyakuninIsshuand the Chinese
translation of it as the objects of analysis. Literally, the title of
the anthology translates to “one hundred people, one poem
each”, as each contributor writes one poem for the anthology
DOI: 10.5176/2251-2853_2.2.118
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GSTF International Journal of Law and Social Sciences (JLSS) Vol.2 No.2, April 2013
compiled by Fujiwara no Teika in approximately the 12th -13th
centuries. And I shall select the updated Chinese translation by
Professor Derun Liu (2007) which is the fruit of painstaking
labor of 26 years. I will examine the stylistic transitivity of
translations by describing their textural format and how they
are practiced as cross-cultural agents. And I will particularly
discuss how the mental space mapping diverse in the SL and
the TL, for which the effective tool would be cognitive
linguistics.
translated by Tan Ke (1988) and verses in TheTaleofGenji
translated by Feng Zikai (1980).
II. EQUIVALENCE OR CORRESPONDENCE: TRANSLATION OF
POETRY REVIEWED
There may be some translation strategy that has proved
effective and become the preferred course of action for
individuals in a given type of translation situation. Thus it can
be seen as a convention. Conventions imply a set of mutual
expectations: the expectation of readers that will probably
adopt a certain type of course, and the translator’s expectation
that recipients expect him or her to do just that. They are
therefore a matter of social expectations and of “expectations of
expectations” (Hermans 1996: 30). Convention is an implicit
norm and it relies on internalized acceptance. If a convention
has served its purpose of solving a recurrent coordination
problem and suit the expectation better than other possible
alternatives, it may grow beyond a mere preference, acquire a
binding character, and intervene the translation activity.
There are a variety of translation versions of Hyakunin
Isshuin the form of five-character quatrain, rhythmical verse in
ancient Chinese or blind verse in modern Chinese before
Derun Liu’s. Liu translates it into the five-character quatrain
rhyming in alternate lines which is very similar with
wuyanjueju, a genre of traditional Chinese poem of four lines,
each containing of five characters with a strict tonal pattern
and rhyme scheme. The form of five-character quatrain can
never be considered as being equivalent to waka insofar as it
contains different elements. Nevertheless, both genres are
classical forms of poetry and consist of divided parts: the
fivecharacter quatrain is a representative form of traditional
Chinese poetry which is manifested in diction, couplet verse
line, and balanced stanzaic form; it is chiefly favored by
literati and officialdom in feudal China ever since the Han
Dynasty and has gradually declined after the Vernacular
Chinese movement and the modernization of the society in the
20th century; the genre of poems in HyakuninIsshuis tanka,
which is a kind of waka popular in the aristocracy from the 6th
to 14th centuries and consists of five units usually with the
pattern of onji“5-7-5-7-7”. They are both terse and significant,
often sung to music, thus can be widely spread. They share the
common themes of depicting idyllic landscape, grief of parting,
yearning between lovers as well as daily life before modern
times. They are written in archaism and ancient grammar, and
the flow of feelings and thoughts are often activated by the
beauty of nature and expressed via romanticizing and
dramatizing the nature. These correspondences may justify
reasonably why waka is often translated into rhythmical verses
in Chinese, such as the Chinese translations of Man'yōshū
translated by Yang Lie (1984) and another version by Li Mang
(1998), TheAnthologyofJapaneseClassicalHaikuedited and
Meanwhile, the divergences between the two genres are
obvious. Instead of lines in Chinese poetry, waka has the unit
(連 ren) and the phrase (句 gu). Traditionally wakain general
has no concept of rhyme. This case represents a typical
structure-shift in that there are no formal correspondents
between SL and TL. There is no sentence-sentence
equivalence, but in the course of a text, equivalences may shift
up and down the rank-scale, often being established at ranks
lower than the sentence (Catford 2000[1965]: 143).
Translation equivalences occur between phrases, words and
even morphemes. Changes of rank, which Catford also calls
unit-shifts, are also changes of structure, changes of class and
changes of term in systems. The formalistic constraint, such as
genre, practices in itself a second-order signification on top of
the primary model of Japanese and Chinese. In fact, certain
arrangements of rhymes in waka may be even considered as
dire faults. It is a chasm that Liu’s translation cannot find ways
to suture. As Jakobson (1959) proposes, in poetry, syntactic
and morphological categories, roots and affixes, phonemes and
their components (distinctive features)—in short, any
constituents of the verbal code—are confronted, juxtaposed,
brought into contiguous relation according to the principle of
similarity and contrast and carry their own autonomous
signification. Phonemic similarity is sensed as semantic
relationship. Jakobson even states that poetry by definition is
untranslatable. Only creative transposition is possible. But I
suppose the study of translated scripts of poems is definitely
not meaningless.
The literary tradition of the target culture, as a set of
literary ideas, beliefs and values, governs a community by
virtue of being regarded as the poetic norms. The anxiety of
influence from the tradition is so intense that the translator
substitutes the norms of the source literature by the
conventional vocabulary, syntactical structure and rhetoric that
the translator and the target readers are familiar with. In fact,
only through the literature and culture conventions and norms
that the translator and the readers already know can the
translation be understood. Then I shall embark on an empirical
study of specific cases, and to look into all the textural
pointers that could be linked to pragmasemiotic levels.
III. AN EMPIRICAL STUDY VIA THE SYNCRETIC
APPROACHES
The translation activity draws away from the practice of
retelling the discourse of the original work and manifest it, but
must also carry out an analytical function towards the
discourse between source text and target text. Take the No.3
poem as an example:
(1) SL: 田子の浦に うち出でて見れば 白妙の富士の高
嶺に 雪は降りつつ （No.4）
TL: 我到田子浦，远瞻富士山。纷纷扬大雪，纨素罩
峰颠。
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GSTF International Journal of Law and Social Sciences (JLSS) Vol.2 No.2, April 2013
(synchronic) recipients construct the two polar influencing
factors for translation.
Not only are substitution and transformation (Popovič 1971:
82) common in the semantic expression, but they also occur in
the syntactical structure. The grammatical categories carry a
high semantic import in whatever one would call verbal
mythology and in poetry above all (Jakobson 1959). If some
grammatical category is absent in a given language, its
meaning may be translated into this language by lexical means.
The following group of texts can serve a persuasive instance:
“白妙の” is “makurakotoba” for the word “雪” ( snow ).
The makurakotoba(“枕詞”) is a traditional rhetorical device in
waka. It is usually a word or words unconcerned with the
topic, which is put ahead of some word, functioning as the
introduction of the latter one. The collocation is usually
regularized. There is a similar figure in ancient Chinese
literature called “xing” or “qixing” (poetic rising). Some
word(s) appears at the beginning of a poem and bears the
similar function. But the word of the phrase for “xing” does
not point to a particular word but rather the whole text, and
the collocation is free. The figure of makurakotobais lost in
the TL, whilst it is indeed a tough task to translate this
expressional device.
(2) SL: 名にし負ば 逢坂山のさねかづら人に知られで
くるよしもがな ( No. 25)
TL: 绵绵真葛草，远侵动相思。愿随芳菲去，相逢人
不知。
Besides, “白妙の雪” is substituted by a metaphor “纨素”,
which means spotless white, exquisite and thin silk according
to AncientChineseDictionary(1998). The metaphor is an icon in
the light of Peirce’s semiotics, precisely an iconic metasign
(Peirce Ⅱ276–277). In fact, if verbal language itself is a
conventional system its method is mainly iconic (Petrilli 2007).
In other words, cognition and perception are relied on the role
of iconicity in the development and multiplication of signifying
processes, to the iconic relation of hypothetical similarity in
literary language, which is a second modeling system or even a
“third” one in a relationship of dialogic involvement. When
discussing the empirical linguistic criterion of the poetic
function, Jakobson (1960) follows Saussure’s two basic axes in
verbal behavior — selection and combination, and applies it
brilliantly to poetics. The artificial part of poetry reduces itself
to principle of parallelism, and the structure of poetry is that of
continuous parallelism (Hopkins 1959:84). Hence, this
substitution in the TL is indeed a poetic move, which is the
dominant and determining function of poetry. From this
perspective, translation can be an advantaged place for the
performance and movement of discourse towards literariness.
(3) SL: あふことの 絶えてしなくは なかなかに人をも
身をも 恨みざらまし ( No. 44)
TL: 当初无邂逅，何至动芳心。怨妾空余恨，哀哀亦
怨君。
(4) SL: 大江山 いく野の道の 遠ければまだふみも見ず
天の橋立 ( No. 60)
TL: 山长平野阔，母去路悠悠。渺杳无音信，几曾桥
立游？
There are several stem forms in Japanese which undergo
slight modifications from the ancient to the modern time.
Conjugative suffixes and auxiliary verbs are attached to the
stem forms of the affixes. The irrealis form (未然形 mizenkei)
is used for plain negative of verbs, causative and passive
constructions. The application of conjugative suffixes to stem
forms follows certain euphonic principles. Conjugations of
many verbs and adjectives differ from the prescribed formation
rules because of euphonic changes. In (2), “れ” is the irrealis
form of the auxiliary verb “ る ” for the passive voice. In (3),
“ざら” is the irrealis form of the auxiliary verb “ず”. In (4),
“見” is the irrealis form of the verb “見る” of the group 2a verb.
There is no corresponding irrealis form of verbs in Chinese.
Thus the substitution and transformation of expression are
necessary. The translator must explore semantic tools to attend
to this issue. In (2), the translator uses the common negative
adverb “不” to express “no”. Whilst he paraphrases the whole
meaning of “ 恨 み ざ ら ” ( the disappointment does not
disappear) by the verb phrase “余恨” (the disappointment stays)
in (3), he uses a traditional negative verb “无” in (4) and adds
the archaism “渺杳” (distant and out of sight) to emphasize the
meaning of emptiness, which can be seen as the intensification
of expression (Popovič 1971:82). It bears evident proof that the
Chinese language lacks conjugation, declension or any other
inflection, which is one of the key features of Chinese grammar.
The translator is aware of this issue, and paraphrases by lexical
means flexibly. As Jakobson (1959) posits, the effective
translation involves two equivalent messages in two different
codes.
Meanwhile, when the original expressional features are
replaced by domestic ones (encompass words, phrases and
idiomatic expressions), the process of mental spaces blending
also changes. As “wansu” has been used to depict the waist of a
beautiful lady — “腰若流纨素” in the famous classical-style
poem “Kongquedongnanfei” (the peacocks flying southeast), it
blends the mental space that is the larger and longer lyrical
tradition and the mental space which is the inmost recesses of
poetic imagination (Chang 2011). I shall elaborate on this
viewpoint later.
The translator is bound in the decision-making process by
norms, such as the aesthetic norm of the literary canon of the
target system, the norm of the translation methods to be used,
the degree of its development and particularly the recipients’
expectations. Knowledge of the literary tradition is of utmost
importance. As for Liu, he must identifies himself with the
prevailing translation conventions of waka and reading
expectations of his own culture in his times, and with identical
or similar norms of the genres which are contemporary with
HyakuninIsshuin China. As a consequence, Liu rewrites
HyakuninIsshuin ancient Chinese catering to readers in the 21st
century. The anxiety from the history (diachrony) of tradition
and the intervention from the expectation of the contemporary
Besides, the tanka of HyakuninIsshuis usually one or two
long sentences. They are paraphrased into four verb phrases in
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GSTF International Journal of Law and Social Sciences (JLSS) Vol.2 No.2, April 2013
Liu’s translation which is the literary convention of
fivecharacter quatrain. As in (1), the SL is a long sentence with
a conditional clause, whilst the TL consists of four verb phrases.
The increase of the verb-object word groups intensifies the
frequency of focus switch and amplifies the message of the text.
The syntactical structure of a language also exerts significant
influences on the cognitive experience of the text. I shall take
(1) as an instance to examine how mental spaces map in the
two versions of poem No.4.
In the source text, tago beach (田子の浦) is the landmark
(L1), and the speaker/actor, or his persona, will be the trajector
(T1). One could also label tago beach as target 1, the
“whiteness” (白妙) target 2, both of which serve to trigger the
speaker/actor’s kinesis. Then “looking far into the lofty Mount
Fuji” becomes the trajector (T2) and the whiteness the
landmark (L2). And then “snowing” turns to be the trajector
(T3), the lofty Mount Fuji the landmark (L3). In the target text,
a series of reorganized chain-reactions of landmark/trajector or
target/trigger can be arrived at: in line 1 and 2, tago beach is the
landmark (L1), and the speaker/actor, or his persona, will be the
trajector (T1). One could also label tago beach as target 1,
Mount Fuji target 2, both of which serve to trigger the
speaker/actor’s kinesis, i.e., bodily movement from the “here
and now”, the moment of enunciation to the “there” of yonder
Mount Fuji. But once at the mountain, the snow becomes the
trajector (T2) and the summit of Mount Fuji the landmark (L2).
Beyond the semantic universe, the whole line 1 and 2 becomes
a trajector whose landmark is line 3 and 4. Thus in reading
process, the action of “outlooking at the tago beach” serves as a
trajector (T3) for the new landmark (L3) “it is snowing and the
summit is covered with white snow”. The series of landmark
and trajector belong to different types of mental spaces: “time
spaces”, as indicated by “ つ つ ” (grammatical device
representing the progressive tense) in the SL and “ 纷 纷 ”
(semantic expression indicating the continuous process) in the
TL, “space spaces”, as in both SL and TL, “domain spaces”, as
indicated by “outlooking”, “snowing” , “covering the mountain
with snow” in both SL and TL, and
“hypothetical spaces”, as the subjunctive in the SL ( Stockwell
2002: 96). But the trajectories of the two are different. In the
SL, the focus is moving from tago beach to the “whiteness”,
and then to the whole Mount Fuji. Whilst in the TL, the shifting
spots are tago beach, Mount Fuji, and finally the white summit
of Mount Fuji.
Japanese Kanji in the literary text. I shall give another example
to illustrate this:
(5) SL: 筑波嶺の 嶺より落る みなの川恋ぞつもりて
淵となりぬる (No.13)
TL: 仰望筑波岭，飞泉落九天。相思积岁月，早已化
深潭。
Literally, “九天” means the ninth heaven, in the Chinese
context it signifies metaphorically the loftiest place in the sky.
It is a traditional expression of overstatement in ancient
Chinese literature and mythology. Therefore, the spatial
divergence in the cognitive experience between SL and TL
generates the semiotic tension. The chain reactions between
mental spaces that are to be blended can only be interpreted to
be culture-exclusive. In other words, it is beyond
“translatability”. Furthermore, The timeless motif (or domain
space) of “落九天” (falling down from the highest of heavens),
in particular, has become a literary allusion since Li Bai’s
verses “飞流直下三千尺，疑是银河落九天” (A waterfall
runs down from an elevation of one thousand meters. I cannot
help speculating that it is actually the Milky Way which falls
down from the highest of heavens) in the well-known poem
“wanglushanpubu” (looking up at the waterfall of Mount Lu).
In other words, there is a time space of the timeless space of
domain space which remains a hypothetical space because it
belongs to another reality space which is poetry (Chang 2011).
The cases above demonstrate how the Chinese written
language is capable of exerting enormous poetic power when
treated as discursive sign-system from a cognitive perspective.
The word/phrase written in Chinese characters is never a
primordial image or a planar graph. It is in fact a type of deixis
or indexical sign in the Peircian sense and a discursive
anaphora (Chang 2011). There are plenty of motifs in Japanese
literature that also appear in Chinese literature, and they can
accomplish their most characteristic mission only if they
integrate into the domestic literary process (Popovič 1971: 136).
The translation process is thus capable of amplifying the
semantic polyvalency of discourse and opening new aesthetic
horizons.
IV. CONCLUSION
Besides, the metaphor “ 纨素 ” does not generate itself
automatically by the two pairs of terms: “white silk” and
“snow”. The two domains have to be blended to make the
metaphor possible. And the specific sign “白妙の” does not
relate to the meaning of the source text unless it is made a pair
with the word “ 雪 ” (snow). Hence it may be inferred that
although Chinese characters might have originated from
pictographs and Japanese kanji inherits a great part of them, the
Chinese script in general does not consist of simple verbal
pictures, but comprises of abstractive image-schemata through
complicated processes of conceptual integration. The script
serves as a modeling-system to build and blend mental spaces
on both the semantic and pragmatic levels. So does the
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It can be inferred that the translation of literature is a
rewriting, being reorganized into the expressive paradigms of
another sign system. There is no standardization of expression
but only conventions and individualizations of expression. And
the translation can be recognized as a particular genre of
literature, as it is a reformulated discourse which bears the
codes and messages from two or even more languages/cultures.
The translators are absolutely endowed with the cross-cultural
horizon which distinguishes them from national writers.
Through the study of translation of HyakuninIsshu, we can
observe the features of the coding mechanism in Chinese poetry
in comparison with those of Japanese poetry, examine how
Chinese classical-style poetry encompasses semantics as a
constitutive part of style and create mediated poetic “space” in
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GSTF International Journal of Law and Social Sciences (JLSS) Vol.2 No.2, April 2013
an intertextual relationship, and analyze how Chinese written
language contributes to mental space mapping in ancient poetry.
In a word, the study of translation is an ideal way to approach
the universal literature and culture.
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