On study of how the time of translation of a book affects English--shaotong chen--13258825

On How the Time of Translation

Affects English-Chinese

Wordplay Translation Quality:

A Case Study of Alice in Wonderland

SHAOTONG CHEN

MA INTERPRETING

2012

On How the Time of Translation

Affects English-Chinese

Wordplay Translation Quality:

A Case Study of Alice in Wonderland

SHAOTONG CHEN

Submitted in partial fulfilment of the

requirements for the degree of MA in Interpreting

Supervisor: Bing Fu

July 2012

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Acknowledgement

I would like to thank my supervisor Ms. Fu for her generous help as well as understanding, encouragement and guidance throughout this Thesis.

I would also like to express my thanks for my family and friends for their support; I couldn't have finished this thesis without them.

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Abstract

This thesis assumes that time should be considered as a major factor when assessing the quality

of wordplay translations as it affects the translation quality and sets out to investigate to what

degree the time of translation of a book affect the translation quality of wordplay from English

into Chinese by using House's Translation Quality Assessment (TQA) Model. If the assumption

that there is an affect is proved to be correct, it will help provide a better understanding to the

translation quality assessment system, which may in turn standardize the translation market, and

also provide more grounds in understanding translation behavior.

By assuming that when different translations of the same book were translated at different

historical period and were assessed by the same translation quality assessment method, the

translation quality results maybe be different mainly because of the differences among the

historical times in which they were translated, this thesis elaborated different approaches in

translation quality assessment before deciding to choose House's TQA model to assess three

different translations of Alice in Wonderland, which were translated in 1922, 2000 and 2010.

After the quality assessment, wordplay translation of the three versions will be looked at to

discuss how time affects their translation quality. Here, the wordplay is defined as Proper Names,

Puns, and Parodies.

The findings were that three translations have very different translation qualities which proved

that the time of translation does affect translation quality greatly. Time affects Proper Name and

Parody Translation more than pun translation. For Proper Names, the earlier the translation, the

more atypical the name could be translated. As for parodies, the earlier the translation, the more

it was translated using the form of traditional Chinese poems. While puns are rarely affected as

translators either decides to translate the pun, which earlier translators did, or not translate the

pun but adding footnotes to explain it. The way some special words were translated can also

reflect time's effect on translation. Also, the bigger the time differences between the translations,

the bigger the differences would be.

However this thesis admits that time is just one of the major factors contributing to the

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differences of assessment results.

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Table of Contents

Acknowledgement ......................................................................................... 1

Abstract ............................................................................................................. 2

Chapter 1 Introduction ................................................................................ 7

Chapter 2 Literature Review ................................................................... 10

2.1 Different Approaches to Translation Quality Assessment and Their Criteria ..... 10

2.1.1 Traditional Approaches ................................................................................................... 10

2.1.2 Receiver Perspective Approaches ................................................................................ 11

2.1.3 Functionalist Approaches ................................................................................................ 14

2.1.4 Text-related Approaches ................................................................................................. 17

2.1.5 Cultural-based Approaches ............................................................................................ 18

2.1.6 Register-based Approaches ............................................................................................ 19

2.2 Wordplay types and Translation Approaches.................................................................. 20

Chapter 3 Methodology ............................................................................. 22

3.1 House's TQA Model and Data Analysis ................................................................................ 22

3.2 Data Selection............................................................................................................................... 24

3.3 Data Collection---Wordplay in Alice in Wonderland ....................................................... 25

Chapter 4 Data Analysis and Discussion ............................................ 29

4.1 Source Text Analysis .................................................................................................................. 29

Mode ......................................................................................................................... 33

Genre ......................................................................................................................... 33

Statement of Function .............................................................................................. 33

4.2Comparison of Original and Translation ............................................................................ 33

4.2.1 Zhao's Alice in Wonderland ............................................................................................ 34

Field ........................................................................................................................... 34

Tenor ......................................................................................................................... 35

Mode ......................................................................................................................... 36

Genre ......................................................................................................................... 36

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Statement of Quality ................................................................................................. 36

4.2.2 Wang's Alice in Wonderland .......................................................................................... 36

Field ........................................................................................................................... 36

Tenor ......................................................................................................................... 37

Mode ......................................................................................................................... 38

Genre ......................................................................................................................... 38

Overt Errors ............................................................................................................... 38


4.2.3 Wu's Alice's Adventure in Wonderland ...................................................................... 39

Field ........................................................................................................................... 39

Tenor ......................................................................................................................... 40

Mode ......................................................................................................................... 41

Genre ......................................................................................................................... 41


4.3 Discussion of the Results and Time's Effect on Wordplay Translation................... 41

4.3.1 Proper Names ...................................................................................................................... 41

4.3.2 Puns ......................................................................................................................................... 43

4.3.3 Parodies ................................................................................................................................. 46

Chapter 5 Conclusions ............................................................................... 49

5.1 Conclusions ................................................................................................................................... 49

5.2 Limitation of the Study ............................................................................................................. 49

References ..................................................................................................... 51

Appendix I Proper Names Translation and Meaning Form ......... 54

Appendix II Puns Form ............................................................................. 56

Appendix III Puns Translation Form ................................................... 59

Appendix IV Parody Translation Form ............................................... 62

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List of Tables and Forms

Form 1: Appendix I Proper Names Translation and Meaning Form

Form 2: Appendix II Puns Forms

Form 3: Appendix III Puns Translation Forms

Form 4: Appendix IV Parody Translation Form

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Chapter 1 Introduction

Probably from the very beginning of translation exists people's interests in pursuit of excellent

translations (Williams, 2001:332). Till today, translation quality assessment still attracts great

attention. Throughout the history, several famous attempts have been made and theories

established in this field. Theories focused on both Micro-Level and Macro-Level have been

formed. For instance, famous scholars like Catford (1998) and his A Linguistic Theory of

Translation: an Essay in Applied Linguistics; Reiss (2000) and her Translation Criticism—the

Potentials and Limitations; Wilss (1982) and his The Science of Translation Problems and Methods.

All these works have discussed translation quality from the micro-level perspective, and most of

them utilized linguistic concepts as assessment criteria. While others like Nida (2003) and his

dynamism equivalence theory; Christinane Nord (1991) and her Scopos theory; Toury (1995) and

his Descriptive Translation Studies. Their works concentrate more on the macro-level. But all of

these theories tried to assess translation from different perspectives and approaches. Even

Venuti's (1995) Invisibility Theory contributed to this area. The variety and the scope of those

theories are very wide. Scholars have borrowed concepts from different subjects such as

linguistics, sociology, neurology, even psychology to examine "the relationship between source

text and target text"(House, 2001:243). However, "这些模式大都难以应用，理论方法和实际需

要之间存在鸿沟"(most of these models are difficult to apply, and there's a gap between

theories and practical requirements)(唐韧, 2011:40). Although some models like House's model

is more workable, and "undoubtedly there can be objective criteria for making a relevant

evaluation of a translation, but they have not yet been adequately recognized or systematically

established and described"( Reiss,2000:2), which means Quality assessment is still a relatively

new field ready to be exploit.

As an interesting and tricky area of translation, wordplay translation has always been the centre

of interests of translation quality assessment. There are a lot of articles dedicated to discuss the

translation quality by using various different assessment methods and suggest how they could be

better translated. For instance, Hans Grassegger (1985) once compared twelve versions of French

translation of Asterix comics in order to study its parody translation, and he concluded that

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parodies cannot be 'translated' but have to be recreated in the target culture in order to be as

good as the original (cited in Tabbert, 2002: 17). Riitta Oittinen (2000) did a similar study by

examining three different Finnish translations of wordplay in Alice in wonderland, and she

believed that norms are what affect the translation quality. However, very few studies have

looked at what factors as assessment criteria may affect the assessment results. And when

factors have been looked at, of all the theories and criteria, the time a book is translated are

often overlooked by scholars. For instance, Julian House (1977) mentioned time as an assessment

criterion, but she didn't elaborate more specifically for its effect on wordplay translation, nor did

she have any empirical studies to back up the theory in this specific field. It appears that very few

of the scholars have considered time as an important factor which may affect the translation

quality assessment results. If my assumption was proved to be correct, it will take assessment

quality theory one step closer to completeness. This is why I choose to study this topic as it is

believed that "翻译质量评估模式的完善将会对翻译市场起到极大的规范作用，并且有益于对

翻译行为的研究"( the consummation of the Translation Quality Assessment System will largely

standardize the translation market, and will help better understanding translation behavior)(李

曦,2010:27).

In this thesis, two relevant fields will be explained and studied in the Literature Review chapter:

previous studies of translation quality assessment approaches including their assessment criteria,

and wordplay types and its translation quality assessment. I will list major theories on translation

quality assessment and explain their assessment perspectives, methods and criteria. I will also

analyze their advantages and disadvantages in order to scrutinize if they have looked at time's

effect when assessing the translations. My analysis will also explain why House's TQA model was

chosen for this case study over the others. Chinese scholars' views and studies in this field will be

presented alongside as well in order to give a general picture of translation quality assessment on

specific language pair, namely English and Chinese. In the second part, I will elaborate wordplay

translation assessment issues, as well as the works related to it. I will also justify the wordplay

types and the materials I have chosen.

In the Methodology chapter, Julian House's Translation Quality Assessment Model will be

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introduced and the reason it is chosen will be re-iterated. How and why the book Alice in

Wonderland is chosen for this case study will be justified; how wordplay data is collected and its

meaning will be presented; how data is to be processed will be explained as well as how time's

effect might be assessed or presented in the assessment results will also be elaborated.

In chapter four, three translations will be assessed according to House's TQA model, after a

general statement of quality, the wordplay data collected will be explained and discussed in order

to test my assumption.

Results and findings will be presented in the final chapter.

A complete collection of wordplay data, its translation and its features will be presented in the

appendix forms.

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Chapter 2 Literature Review

In this chapter I will explain the previous studies on translation quality assessment, their main

theory, assessment criteria, and criticism against them. By doing so, I will present a more general

picture in this field of study in order to check if time has been considered as an assessment

criteria, and from what perspective it has been considered. Also, by illustrating different

approaches and criticism against them, it will eventually lead to explain why House's TQA model

is chosen as my main assessment method in studying times effects on translation qualities. In the

second part, I will discuss the text types and translation strategies of wordplay translation. The

reason translation strategies are involved is because the belief that when a special text type is

assessed, its translation strategies need to be looked at (Reiss, 2000:25-43). I will also present a

general review of the works of wordplay translation assessment on Alice in wonderland to see if

anyone has systematically studied the time's effect on wordplay translation quality assessment,

what their results are and how their study will be different from mine.

2.1 Different Approaches to Translation Quality Assessment and Their

Criteria

When we assess a translation, we are looking at translation criticism, or even more. Assess a

translation means to look at "the nature of translation, to be more specific, the nature of the

relationship between a source text and its translation text"(House, 2001:244). Before any formal

theory or approach was established, it was quite common for people to mix up literature criticism

and translation assessment. As a result, a translation was usually assessed as a literature, other

than a translation (Reiss, 2000:2). That was the early chaos before the "real" translation

assessment method took form.

2.1.1 Traditional Approaches

The earliest effort of real translation assessment might be the so called Mentalist methods. When

an assessment was made by this group, the evaluations are usually subjective and intuitive.

Judgements like "reads like an original", "translated fluently", or "sensitively translated" usually

came up as a result, which are very vague and unsupported (Reiss, 2000:2). Similar views were

held by Chinese scholar 严复(1898:5) who proposed three assessment criteria: 信，达，雅

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(faithfulness, expressiveness, and elegance) but failed to give more specific standards as how

translation should be assessed according to each criterion.

This view has been promoted by neo-hermeneutic believers who regard translation as a "highly

individual creativity that highly depends on subjective interpretation and transfer

decisions"(House, 2001:244), which means they believe that text has no specific meaning but

depends on how it was interpreted by individuals. From today's point of view, this belief would

be close to ridiculous. Bühler (1998) in his book once argued and quoted by House (2001:244)

that "this method is no good in making arguments as to when, how and why a translation is

good".

Such critics like Dryden, Dolet and Tytler, were listed by Munday(2001) as pioneers in creating a

systematic approach to translation assessment. However, they did nothing more than repackage

the old content. They may rename the translation into "meta-phrase, paraphrase and

imitation"(Dryden, 1992:17), they still didn't come up with any concrete solutions as to what

criteria should be included in the assessment.

Then during the religious translation period, came out more specific criteria: literal translation vs.

free translation, an argument between Cicero and St. Jerome. It is usually called "word-for-word"

translation Vs "sense-for sense" translation. Cicero was a great supporter of literal translation.

This might because back then the judgement was very much affected by religion. Back then

people believed that the word of God has to be translated literally (Nida, 2001:2). For instance,

Martin Luther was accused because in his translation of the New Testament, he added one word

that doesn't have equivalence in the source text. (Munday, 2001:22). Although the conception

was proposed over a millennium ago, it remains popular in the 20th century. However, it is

argued that because of the language differences, it is impossible to find out a word with the exact

same meaning or structure in two very different languages, thus all translation is a process of

paraphrasing. So, in a sense, all translation is sense-for-sense translation (Nida, 2001: 2).

2.1.2 Receiver Perspective Approaches

Behaviouristic views are more "objective" when compared with mentalist views. They regard

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translation work as a product oriented process which is locked in a "black box" of the human

brain. So they believe it is no good to study the translation process but the "stimulus and

response" between the reader and translated texts (House, 2001:244). However, Nida criticised

this method as being "inadequate, for the conditioning features of human behaviour cannot be

readily controlled as are those of animals in mazes" (Nida, 1964:7).

Instead, by borrowing Noam Chomsky (1957)'s concept of "surface structure" and "deep

structure", which he believed that "we are not content to look upon a language as some fixed

corpus of sentences, but as a dynamic mechanism capable of generating an infinite series of

different utterances"(Nida, 1964:9), Nida created his famous assessment theory called

equivalence theory, which he further divided into two types, formal equivalence and dynamic

equivalence (Nida, 1964:159). By doing this, he successfully avoided the debate on free

translation vs. literal translation as he regarded every translation a way of paraphrasing. In Nida's

theory, readers are the test subjects; their response to a translation work forms the main

assessment criteria which Nida puts it in his book:

When the question of the superiority of one translation over another is raised, the

answer should be looked for in the answer to another question, 'best for whom'? The

relative adequacy of different translations of the same text can only be determined in

terms of the extent to which each translation successfully fulfils the purpose for which it

was intended. In other words, the relative validity of each translation is seen in the

degree to which the receptor are able to respond to its message (in terms of both form

and content) in comparison with (1) what the original author evidently intended would

be the response of the original audience and (2) how that audience did, in fact, respond.

The responses can, of course, never be identical, for inter-lingual communication always

implies some differences in cultural setting, with accompanying diversities in value

systems, conceptual presuppositions, and historical antecedents.

(Nida, 1976:64)

Nida believed that as an end product, a good translation should be as effective as the original,

which means, the manner in which receptors of a translation respond to the translation should

be "equivalent" to the manner in which the source text's receptors respond to the original, and in

order to do that, a translator "must go beyond mere comparisons of corresponding structures

and attempt to describe the mechanisms by which the total message is decoded, transferred and

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transformed into the structures of another language"(Nida, 1964:27). Thus the basis of formal

equivalence involves linguistic and grammatical structure study in order to analyze a

word-for-word shift, while the dynamic equivalence is more about evaluating translation from

reader's perspective and their preferred as Nida believe dynamic equivalence exceeds pure

linguistic concepts (Nord, 1997:5). Nida (1964) preferred dynamic equivalence, and looked at the

"intelligibility" and "informativeness" of a translation work, and if the work has transferred those

two features from the original work into the translation.

However, Nida's theory posed very practical problems as to how to evaluate a reader's response.

A work like the Bible, or Alice in wonderland could be written way back in time, and with the

general environment changing, how should a reader's response be measured? Should it be

confined in one country one language or in different languages; should cultural differences be

considered while assessing reader's response; should readers' own experiences or their general

informativeness of their times be considered. Nida's theory didn't answer or explain any of these

questions mentioned above. Nor did he give quantitative standards as to how to measure

reader's response as it is a more subjective feeling. In her article, House criticised Nida's theory

as being "impossible to measure an 'equivalent response,' let alone 'informativeness' or

'intelligibility'." (House, 2001:244). It further states that if none of these phenomena can be

measured, then they are meaningless and useless as translation evaluation criteria (ibid: 244).

Nida defend his method by stating that "every translator is allowed to speak for him/herself,

because as in any real human activity, complete objectivity is impossible"(Nida, 1964:29).

Although some techniques are designed to monitor readers' response to a translation, for

instance like reading aloud, close and rating procedures, etc, the success rates are very low,

because these techniques didn't include the original. The reason why the original was not

included was because of Nida's view on dynamic equivalence:

A translation of dynamic equivalence aims at complete naturalness of expression, and tries

to relate the receptor to modes of behaviour relevant within the context of his own culture;

it does not insist that he understand the cultural patterns of the source-language context in

order to comprehend the message.

(Nida, 1964:159)

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As the equivalence focuses on evaluating the translations native features and overlooks the

original work, it is impossible for dynamic equivalence to reveal the relations between the source

and the target translation work.

What's more, Newmark criticized that "the equivalence approach lacks consistency: some

scholars praise literalism as the optimum procedure in translation, while others, such as Koller,

allow a certain number of adaptive procedures, paraphrase or other non-literal procedures in

specific cases"(1984:16). Thus "these rather arbitrary criteria do not account for the fact that

implicit values should remain implicit in some cases, nor do they recognize that comprehensibility

is not a general purpose common to all texts or text-types"(Nord, 1997:8).

Nida's theory was also challenged by a Chinese scholar Hu (1993) who applied Nida's response

theory in an experiment, in which he had a few expressions in English and their translations in

Chinese, then he give them to the readers, and observe their response; he concluded that it is

impossible to have the same response simply because Chinese and English language has

completely different word order, and sentence structures.

2.1.3 Functionalist Approaches

This approach was first developed by Reiss in her book Translation Criticism—Possibilities and

Criticism on the bases of the equivalence based functional relationship between source and

target text (Nord, 1997:9). She later states further on that translators cannot solely rely on source

text analysis alone nor the features derived from it, instead they should decide the functionality

of the target text in a translational context by saying:

All types of translation mentioned may be justified in particular circumstances. And

interlinear version can be extremely useful in comparative linguistic research. Grammar

translation is a good aid to foreign language learning. Leaned translation is appropriate if

one wishes to focus on the different means whereby give meanings are verbally

expressed in different languages. And the changing of a text's function, as a verbal

component within a total communicative process, may also be a justified solution,

however, when the translation is an end in itself, in the sense of simply seeking to extend

an originally monolingual communicative process to include receivers in another language,

then it must be conceived as an integral communicative performance, which without any

extra-textual additions (notes, explanations etc) provides an insight into the cognitive

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meaning, linguistic form, and communicative function of the source language text.

(Reiss, 1989:114 in Nord, 1997:10)

At this point, a new functional approach was considered formed because Reiss pointed out more

criteria like text functions, extra-lingual additions, cognitive meaning, and linguistic form

including grammar, as well as communication function. Besides Katharina Reiss, its supporters

also include Vermeer, and Christiane Nord. They believed that the translation purpose or the so

called 'skopos' is very important to be included in evaluation of translation quality as judgement

criteria, which also includes how target culture affects a translation. This is because Vermeer

believed that the translation was required as a tool to transfer information with purpose, thus

the person commencing the translation makes decisions which would make the translation and

its quality fit to its function. Here translation is regarded as having a function to fulfil in the target

environment (House, 2001:245). It is also believed that the translation results reflects the

strategies used during translation (Nord, 1997:29). This is because the end product, as a

communication tool, its ultimate purpose is to assist its target reader to understand the original

writers' intention (Nord, 1997). This theory, just like Nida's, too has successfully avoid the debate

between word-for-word translation and sense-for-sense translation, as the theory believed a

good translation would fit its function, and utilize both techniques freely, or choose a proper

degree in between as the function requires (ibid:29). Gentzler had expressed his view of a good

translation from skopos point of view which is when the derivation is consistent with the original

skopos, could a translation be deemed faithful (Gentzler, 2001:72).

However, although "function" and "purpose" are considered important in assessing translation

qualities, they have never been made quantitative, not even elaborate in detail as to how they

could measure or judge the quality of a translation. It is not clear as how to decide if a translation

is equivalent or adequate, or how to analyze a skopos of a translation from a linguistic

perspective. Let alone of generating any satisfactory results. For instance, Nord criticised in his

book (1997:110-119) that the theory is flawed because not all translation has a purpose or

function. Sometimes, skopos theory even betrays the original, because it didn't pay enough

attention to the linguistic features of the source text (Munday, 2001:81). It is also being criticised

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by House (2001:245) that skopos theory regards the original work as a source of information,

which can be added or omitted during translation as the translator sees fit to its purpose, or

function. Thus, as all translations are related to its receptor cultural norms to a degree, skopos

theory can never be considered an adequate theory in judging a translation.

However, there are people like Nord and Reiss who tried to improve assessment criteria of

Skopos theory. For instance, Nord proposed a series of criteria in order to offset the linguistic

aspects criteria shortages of skopos theory. She proposed three guidelines for translation, namely

"translation brief", "source text analysis" and "the functional hierarchy of translation problems"

(Nord, 1997:59-67). The translation brief was meant to help translators get a tone of the function

of the text, its communication purposes, targeted readers, prospective time and places, and the

motive of text production. Here, Nord for the first time, included time as an assessment criteria,

however, she only meant time as a technical requirement concerning capacity. Her example was

that if a translation is need for a limited period of time, for instance a commercial brochure for a

project, then it should be confined to certain pages(ibid:67). Although she didn't relate time to

translation quality assessment results, this is a start.

Nord further clearly stated that "the basis for the evaluation of a translation is the adequacy or

inadequacy of the solutions found for the translation problems" (Nord, 1997:74). She further

recognized four types of errors and their solutions which include pragmatic, cultural, linguistic,

and text-specific translation errors. She accentuated that it is not enough to just analyze the

problems, but studies on text function and purpose as well as a clear definition of translation

units should be regarded as the core of the quality assessment criteria and they are very helpful

in solving these translation problems (Nord, 1997). However, it is still unclear as how exactly the

"adequacy" or "inadequacy" of a translation can be assessed.

Reiss in her book (2000) developed more specific translation assessment criteria for functionalist

approach. She stated that text type should be taken into consideration during translation quality

assessment, because as different text types have different functions or purposes, they require

different assessment criteria, which would lead back to different translation strategies. Reiss

classified four different text types: "content-focused text, form-focused text, appeal-focused text

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and audio-medial text"(Reiss, 2000:25-43). She argues that each text has a very different feature

which would in turn need different translation strategies, and assessment criteria. For instance,

content-focused text is usually more depictive, form-focused text expressive, and appeal-focused

text persuasive (ibid: 25-43). This is the first time in assessment history a text type concept has

been proposed, and lead to much more objective and measurable criteria in translation quality

assessment. Her approach for the first time includes text types that are outside literature and

connect translation strategies with assessment criteria. However, Snell-Hornby (1995:30)

criticized her model as being too stiff to cope with the real world text type complexity. Yet, we

cannot deny the significance of this attempt in specifying assessment criteria.

Similar views on text type was hold by Chinese scholar范守义(1987)(listed in李曦,2010:30), who

analyzed translations quantitatively according to relevance degree. The core value is the

credibility of a translation and sentence was regarded as a translation unit. He recognized nine

criteria among them are text types and paronomasia meaning of words, namely wordplay.

2.1.4 Text-related Approaches

This approach mainly focuses on the translation text as its name suggests. A translation is

evaluated within the target culture regarding its form and function. Its representative theory is

Toury(1995)'s Descriptive Translation Studies (DTS). This study doesn't judge a translation by

comparing it with translation standards; on the contrary, it compares a translation with its foreign

counterparts in the target culture, looks at it from a local perspective, and describes its feature as

it is. After analysis and feature description, factors that may lead to the final results were

established, analyzed and studied. Thus, the original work was not regarded as highly important.

However, this approach was criticized as impractical as the criteria are usually based on a large

quantity of empirical data collection and study. This theory was never backed by a

"comprehensive" enough study in order to prove it is usable. Another problem with this theory,

according to House, is that "a translation cannot be compared as if it were an independent, new

product of the target culture" (House, 2001:245), this alone, will sabotage the assessment results.

Despite this theory taken the target cultural norms (micro level) and the target culture

background (macro level) into the context judgement consideration, it never gives out specific

18

criteria as to how to judge what a good translation is (ibid: 246). Not to mention, according to its

norms, a translation needs to be proved a genuine translation other than an adaptation or an

original pretending to be translation before it can be assessed. However, there were no criteria or

methods as to how to prove a translation is a genuine one.

Other than DTS, there are other linguistic perspective opinions on translation quality assessment,

such as Catford(1998), Reiss(2000), Wilss(1982) etc. In their early works, they offered criteria to

look at; however, the process was not systematic, but rather sporadic. Later on, there are

Baker(1992), Hatim and Mason(1997), Hickey(1998), they have made practical contributions to

translation text studies. Although they did not directly relate their theories to translation quality

assessment, they did widen the possibilities of assessing translations from different perspectives

such as linguistics, pragmatics, sociolinguistics, stylistics and discourse analysis (House,

2001:246).

2.1.5 Cultural-based Approaches

Cultural based approaches assess translations from a more broad sense. It involves target

language cultural settings, histories and its conventions.(Lefevere and Bassnett, 1990:11). They

argued in the book (1990) that different cultures may stress different strategies in translation

when dealing with different text types, so translation is an activity that both depends on target

cultural norms as well as its source language cultural norms to function (ibid: 8).

This new trend of translation assessment was described as "cultural turn" by Gentzler (2001:47)

who regarded translation as an interaction between two cultures other than an activity merely

between two languages (Gentzler, 2001:190). In cultural based translation studies, Venuti

contributed to this field notably. He assessed translations in the sense of "domestication" and

"foreignization" (1995). In his book Translator's Invisibility, he defined "domestication" as "bring

the writer close to the reader", which means the translator would try set up a background in the

book that is very familiar to the target reader in order for the work to be more easily understood

despite cultural differences, while "foreignization" as to "bring the reader closer to the writer" by

presenting the foreignness without compromise, namely maintain the original form and style

(ibid: 148). Venuti supports "foreignization" by claiming that a good translation shouldn't be

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transparent or fluent if these features were obtained by sacrificing the foreignness. He believed

that the translator's position should be visible in the translation works (Venuti, 1995).

Although Venuti's theory provided new insights into translation quality assessment by looking at

translation quality from a cultural perspective, his supporting of foreignness seemed too extreme

to other academics. For instance, Berman criticised his view as being radical, and that "the

readers may not appreciate or even feel weird about the foreignness if presented too much in the

translation work"(cited in Venuti, 2002: 276-289).

2.1.6 Register-based Approaches

This approach was sometimes called discourse-based approach. It is different from other

approaches; this is because this approach proposed by House looks at the context and register of

a translation. This approach "draws on pragmatic theory, on Halliday's functional and systematic

theory, on notions developed inside the Prague school of languages and linguistics, on register

theory and stylistics as well as discourse analysis. It also based on the notion of 'equivalence'"

(House, 1997:29). House suggested that the essence of translation is to maintain the "meaning"

of the text intact while transfer from one language into another. Here, the "meaning" includes

semantic, pragmatic and textual aspects (House, 1977:40). Thus, House upgraded Crystal and

Davy's Model to explain her situational-functional text analysis and assessment methods, she

divided all the criteria into two general categories: A---Dimensions of Language User and B---

Dimensions of Language Use. A concerns the writer while B is about the work its self. Thus, A is

further divided into three sub-criteria: Geographical Origin, Social Class, Time; B includes:

Medium: Simple/Complex, Participation: Simple/complex, Social Role relationship, Social Attitude,

Province (House, 1977, 42). "至少从目前所掌握的文献来看，这是国际翻译批评界第一个具有

完整的理论和实证的翻译质量评估模式"(This is the first time ever, a complete theoretical

translation quality assessment being systematic and backed up by concrete data) (李曦, 2010: 28).

That's the reason this model is chosen in order to study times effect on translation quality

assessment results. However, this does not mean that House's theory is perfect. Some Chinese

Scholar has criticised that because the case studies in her paper was between German and

English, it may not be suitable for assess translations between Chinese and English. But House's

20

model was proved to be suitable by many dissertations which studies the application of House's

model in assessing Chinese-English translations, according to the researcher, the results are

always positive. For instance, Jia (2010) has studied House's TQA Model's application to Chinese

English translation in her dissertation and concluded that it is suitable for assessing translations

between Chinese and English.

2.2 Wordplay types and Translation Approaches

As Reiss and 范守义 both include text type or paronomasia text as a criteria for translation

assessment, it is important to explain historical views on wordplay types and their translation

strategies in order to assess wordplay translation.

Delia Chiaro defined wordplay as "every conceivable way in which language is used with the

intent to amuse"(1992:2). Delabastita developed this concept one step further by saying that

"wordplay is a textual phenomenon which is exploited both in linguistic structures and meanings

in order to bring about a communicatively significant confrontation between the form and the

meaning" (1996:128). Weaver (1964) recognized three types of wordplay: "the proper names,

parodies, and puns" (Weaver, 1964:80).

Delabastita (1996) agreed Weaver's classification of wordplay and went on to distinguish 4 types

of pun translations. They are: “Homonymy (same sound and writing), Homophony (same sound),

Homograph (same writing), Paronymy (similar form)” (ibid:128). However, as far as wordplay is

concerned, there are three types of 'Pun' should be added to the list: Polysemy (one word has

different but related senses), Malapropism means “the incorrect usage of a word, usually with

comic effect” (de Vries & Verheij, 1997:72-76), Simile (a comparison of two unlike things using

like or as) (leasttern.com).

According to this classification, puns are clearly proved to be a kind of wordplay that largely

depends on the sound, the form and the meaning of a word. Thus it is the most difficult to

translate as Mateo believed that Universal jokes are the most easy to translate, while linguistic

jokes, the most difficult (1994:128). This is because, according to House, "wordplay, as a type of

form-oriented text, its meaning is attached to the form, and form are impossible to be

21

re-expressed in another language system, thus, meaning cannot be re-expressed, but by other

ways, such as paraphrase, or commentary" (House, 1997:48). Although House excluded wordplay

analysis from her case study, she still argued that with this type of text, usually "the

foregrounding is subject to communication", which means the expression itself is not important,

but their function is, which is to draw addressee's attention, in other words, it is the meaning

should be transferred other than the form. However, Hans Grassegger thinks otherwise. In his

book (1985) he systematically studied wordplay translation and concluded that it is not

equivalents of content that translators have to look for, but equivalents of form (cited in Tabbert,

2002: 319).

What's more, Delabastita even provided a more systematic translation strategy targeting pun

translation. He suggested 8 basic types of solutions in dealing with pun translation (Delabastita

1996:134).

Delabastita also suggested that for parody translation, similar strategies can be considered

(ibid:138), which means the translator could find a similar verse in the original culture and

parody it the same way like the author did. This is because that it is argued that without knowing

the original parody verse, a parody cannot be appreciated. For instance, Raphaelson-West

argued that "the piece of literature being parodied needs to be commonly known in order for the

parody to be effective"(1989:134). However not everyone agrees with this argument, Milner

(1903) concluded after a study on the popularity of Alice in Wonderland after its time, that the

original verse fades with time, and most of the readers never heard of the original verse by the

time Alice got popular, and this didn't affect the fact that the parodies in Alice are popular among

its readers, to whom the parody might be the only verse they know other than the original. He

believed that it is the parody itself, its rhythm, its content and the way it is presented that really

matters. His conclusion could be used by the translators; as such they could concentrate more on

how to create a better rhythm for a parody translation instead of how to convene the real

meaning of it.

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Chapter 3 Methodology

This thesis mainly studies if time should be considered when assessing translation quality, and

how it affects Translation quality assessment results. Assumption was made that under the same

translation model, because of the difference in the time when the translation is produced, the

assessment results may be different. By finding out more about translation quality assessment, it

may lead to a better understanding of the field, and benefit translation markets as a whole.

In order to study this assumption, translation need to be assessed, thus a model is needed. Here I

choose to use House's TQA model, not only because her model is so far the most complete

systematic translation quality assessment model, but also because her assessment method

covers both macro and micro level and provides both qualitative and quantitative criteria. This

point has been justified in the Literature Review by analyzing different approaches throughout

history. In this chapter I will illustrate certain concepts, as well as why the data is selected, how

the data is collected, and how it will be analyzed, TQA model will be explained in detail.

3.1 House's TQA Model and Data Analysis

The main method for data analysing is by using House's TQA model to assess chosen translation

versions, and discuss the results in order to discover if there was any differences, and if they are

caused by time differences.

As I explained in the Literature review, House's model is largely register based. She gave eight

different assessing criteria, which are Geographical Origin, Social Class, Time, Medium:

Simple/Complex, Participation: Simple/complex, Social Role relationship, Social Attitude, and

Province (House, 1977, 42). Later in her revised model she further developed her model into a

more systematic one relating to the field, tenor, and mode of texts (House, 1997:108).

The following map will illustrate House's model clearly:

23

"FIELD: refers to the nature of the social action that is taking place, namely the field of activity,

topic, and content of the text or its subject matter.

TENOR: refers to who is taking part, to the nature of the participants, the addresser and the

addressees, and the relationship between them in terms of social power and social distance, as

well as the 'degree of emotional charge' in the relationship between addresser and addressees

(Halliday 1978:33 cited in House 1997:109).

MODE: refers to both the spoken and written (which can be either simple or complex), and the

degree to which potential or real participation is allowed for between the interlocutors."

(House, 1997:108)

Clearly, from the form above, I will analyze both the original work and chosen translations and

compare them according to above criteria. By analyzing each criterion, the results of quality

assessment will be presented along the way, and also decide if the translation is a covert

translation or an overt translation. According to House, an overt Translation refers to a transaltion

which is obviously not target reader-oriented. It is a "second original". (House, 1997: 66). While a

covert translaiton is a translation that enjoys freedom and a translation that doesn't read like a

translation, like a recreation of the original in another language (ibid: 69). And later results will be

discussed to see if there's any differences between the three, and if they were caused by time.

24

As for the selection or reorganization of wordplay in Alice in Wonderland, there were plenty of

work that has looked at wordplay types and places in the book, the wordplay data mainly

collected according to Weaver's Alice in many tongues, and Gardner's the Annotated Alice.

Because my study mainly concentrates on time's effect on wordplay translation quality

assessment, I will directly use authoritative and justified work which pointed out almost every

one of the wordplay in Alice in wonderland. Wordplay data will be listed in the Data Collection

session. The analyzed wordplays will be presented in appendix in the form.

The concrete method of data collection is that according to recognized wordplay, I read the

original work to find the wordplays and then look for their corresponding wordplays in the

translated works. Then list and mark them with its page number in each book. The form will be

provided in Appendix. After assessing the whole book and its criteria, the results will be

discussed while looking at specific wordplay translation.

3.2 Data Selection

As I have stated before that text type was considered an important part during translation

assessment, scholars such as Reiss, House, and 范守义 all made their effort in distinguishing

different text types as it is believed that different text type require different translation strategies

and thus will need a different translation assessment method (Reiss, 2000:25-43).

The sample chosen in this thesis is wordplay in Alice in wonderland (1865) by Lewis Carroll, a

Victorian children's book, famous for its translation difficulty as it is full of wordplays. For

instance Weaver alone recognized five types of wordplay in Alice in wonderland. A Chinese

Scholar has also recognized this feature by saying "…虽然庄士敦曾把全书口译给末代皇帝爱新

觉罗·溥仪听过，却一直未见有中译本问世。其原因是：书里头顽（玩）字的笑话太多，本

来已经是似通的不通，再翻译了变成不通的不通了，所以没有人敢动它…" (…although

Reginald F. Johnston has told Puyi, the last Emperor of China, the story, but its Chinese written

version never came out. The reason was that the story is full of jokes playing on words, which

makes the story seem nonsense even in English, if translated into Chinese, which would be to

translate the nonsense into nonsense, so no one would dare to do so…).

25

As for wordplay definition, types and translation strategies, I have already covered these in the

Literature Review. Here, I re-iterate wordplay types which are: puns, parodies and proper names.

The book as a novel is depictive while the text type of wordplay is obviously form-oriented as I

have justified in the literature review.

Translation versions are chosen mainly depending on the time they were produced. Three

versions are chosen: 《阿丽思漫游奇境记》(Alice in Wonderland)by 赵元任(Zhao)(1922)，《爱

丽丝漫游奇境记》(Alice in Wonderland)by 王永年(Wang)(2000),《爱丽丝奇境历险记》(Alice's

Adventure in Wonderland)by 吴钧陶(Wu)(2010). These three translators are famous Chinese

translators, and their works are widely recognized as representatives of its time. Plus, the time

they are translated are in 1922, 2000, and 2010 respectively. I choose them on purpose as to

study another element, time differences. My assumption is: the bigger the time difference is, the

more effect is has on translation quality assessment results. The time differences between the

three works are 79 years and 10 years. The two differences are large enough to see if there's any

different effect on translation quality assessment results.

3.3 Data Collection---Wordplay in Alice in Wonderland

There are 22 proper names (characters), 39 puns, and 9 parodies in Alice in wonderland

according to weaver (1964) and Martin Gardner (2000). 39 puns covered almost all the pun types

recognized.

The Proper names are as follows:

Alice, the main character in the book, a little girl who experienced strange things underground,

and the word originated from greek meaning truth, or without madness.

The White Rabbit, the character lead Alice to wonderland

Dinah the Cat: Alice's cat, it was mentioned in a few times

The Mouse: a creature Alice met in the pool

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DoDo: appeared in chapter three; it is an extinct bird, which was about the size of a swan,

covered with down instead of feathers, with short, strong legs, and wings too small for flight;

also means a stupid person. The pronunciation of this word fits the writer's name, Dodgson.

The Eaglet: a representation of Alice's sister Edith in real life

Lory: a representation of Alice's elder sister Lorina in real life

The Duck: a creature Alice met in the pool

Pat: appeared as a helper in the White Rabbit House

Mary Ann: the White Rabbit's maid

Bill the lizard: another helper in the White Rabbit House

The Caterpillar: a creature Alice met in the forest

The Duchess: a character Alice met in the kitchen

The Cheshire cat: a cat appeared in chapter six, the expression came from a place called Cheshire,

a big place in England and there was a breed of cat goes with the idiom: "grin like a Chesire cat".

The March Hare: the hare is said to be mad in March as they enter mating season.

The Hatter: in Britain, there's a saying as mad as a hatter, but the origin of the phrase is unknown.

I think mad as a hatter came about from hat makers using mercury and becoming poisoned from

it over time which made them insane.

The Dormouse: a type of sleeping mouse went to stupor during winter. This is a type of mouse

which is usually found in houses, different from those in fields (field mouse). They eat nuts,

suggesting the squirrel of present-day slang or the American species to which it is most closely

related. It goes into a stupor during cold weather. Dormire in Latin means to sleep, while there's

no need to explain the rest of the word.

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The King/Queen/Knave of Hearts: characters Alice met in the garden

Gryphon: Gryphon is the original spelling of griffin. It is a mythical creature with eagle head and

lion body.

The Mock Turtle: to mock means to make fun of others; it is a sad character appeared in chapter

nine.

39 puns were grouped into 7 subtypes: Homonymy, homophony, Homograph, paronymy,

polysemy, malapropism, simile.

Homonymy(5):

The fall-20, great girl-25, this is the driest thing I know-32, learning to draw…What did they

draw…They draw the treacle from…they draw the treacle from-76-77, they were in the well, they

were…well in-77.

Homophony(2):

Tale-tail-35, Axis-axes-63

Homograph(5)

Explain yourself…I can't explain myself…I am not myself…I am not myself, you see-50, mustard

mine…mine…the more there is of mine the less there is of yours-91, at dinn-…where din

maybe…101, I am a poor man…poor speaker-112, before she had this fit…you never had

fits…then the words don't fit you-120-121

Paronymy(9)

Cats eat bats-bats eat cats-20, I had not!...A knot!-37, pig, or fig?-68, tortoise…he taught us-95,

lessons…lessen-97, whiting…it does the boots and the shoes…are done with whiting-102, soles

and eels-102, porpoise…purpose-102, I hadn't begun my tea-twinkling of the tea-…it began with

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the tea…of course twinkling begins with a T…-111

Polysemy(9)

By being drowned in my own tears-29, an old crab…the patience of an oyster-38, grow up…grown

up-41, time…to beat time-73, off with their heads…are their heads off? Their heads are gone-83,

flamingos and mustard both bite-90, either you or your head must be off…-92, we went to school

every day…I have been to a day school too-96, old crab-97

Malapropism(6)

Antipathies-19, curiouser and curiouser!-24, realing and writhing-96, ambition, distraction,

uglification and derision-96, mystery, seaography, drawling, stretching and fainting in coil-97,

laughing and grief-97

Simile(3)

Shut up like telescope-22, in my going out altogether, like a candle-22, I'm opening like the largest

telescope-24,

Puns and their explanations are listed in Appendix II.

Nine parodies are: How Doth the Little Crocodile; You are Old, Father William; Speak Roughly to

Your Little Boy; Twinkle Twinkle, Little Bat; The Lobster Quadrille; The Voice of The Lobster; Turtle

Soup; The Tarts; The Letter in The Trial

As it is impossible to study and compare all the parodies, three most famous parodies was

chosen to be included in the study which are: How Doth the Little Crocodile; You are Old, Father

William; and Twinkle Twinkle, Little Bat (Gardner, 2000: 213-242).

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Chapter 4 Data Analysis and Discussion

In this chapter, I will use House's TQA model to analyze and compare both the original and three

translations, after reaching assessment results, results will be compared for differences, and

discussed to see if it was caused by time.

4.1 Source Text Analysis

Alice in Wonderland is a Victorian children's book written by Charles Lutwidge Dodgson under

the pseudonym Lewis Carroll and published in 1865. It has been one of the most popular

children's stories translated into more than 70 languages. And it is very famous for its translation

difficulty due to its abundant wordplay.

Field: This book has twelve chapters and tells a story of a girl named Alice falling into an

underground world after chasing a rabbit down a rabbit hole, where she experiences surreal

events that cannot happen in the real world. The story starts with Alice trying to find a way

through a very small door to the garden. She drank a liquid and shrank to the suitable size only to

find out she forgot the key, then she ate a cake and became very large. After crying a pool of

tears, where she almost drowned, she shrank again. She met many creatures who can talk English

while swimming in the pool, and they had a meeting about how to get dry after they were on

land. Later Alice's talking of her Cat Dian scared away all the creatures. She was sent to the

Rabbit's house to get gloves as the Rabbit mistook her for his maid Marry Ann. She grew big

again in the house and after kicking Bill out of the chimney; she ate cakes and shrank again. She

ran into a forest and met a caterpillar who told her to eat mushrooms. She did, and again her

height changed. Later she encountered the Duchess, Cheshire cat, participated a mad tea party, a

croquet match with the Queen of hearts, listened to Mock Turtle's story and ended up in a court

room where an investigation about stolen tarts was taking place. She finally woke up from the

dream.

This story was made up by the author for three young girls on a boat trip in Oxford, UK during

Victorian times. The author himself was a mathematician, logician, Anglican deacon, and

photographer at Oxford University. The story was narrated by the author in a nonsense way. The

30

story is full of fears of growing up, and threats of death (Gardner, 2000:203).

Lexical means: The book contains many proper names. This data has been listed in the

Methodology Chapter. For example: Pat, The Cheshire Cat, The March Hare, The Hatter, The

Gryphon, and The Mock Turtle.

Syntactical means: The conversation part in the story was in present tense, the other parts are all

written in past tense, using words like "Alice signed", "there was", "Alice began", etc. The story

was written to be read, all the conversations are indicated as verbal process by using words like

"replied", "said", "asked". Also, the book highlighted the perception using verbs such as

"thought", "guess", "suppose", etc.

Textual Means: The text will have to be read out aloud to maintain its coherency due to its

abundance in wordplay, especially puns which have same sound different form and meaning.

They add obscurity to the comprehension of the text.

For instance, Alice listened to the mouse's story:

"'Mine is a long and a sad tale!' said the Mouse, turning to Alice, and sighing.

'It is a long tail, certainly,' said Alice, looking down with wonder at the Mouse’s tail; “but why do

you call it sad?”

… …

'You are not attending!' said the Mouse to Alice, severely. 'What are you thinking of?'

'I beg your pardon,' said Alice very humbly: 'you had got to the fifth bend, I think?'

'I had not!' cried the Mouse, sharply and very angrily.

'A knot!' said Alice, always ready to make herself useful, and looking anxiously about her. 'Oh, do

let me help to undo it!'"

(Carroll, 1993::14-15)

In this section, if the sound of the word is not involved, it is definitely very difficult for readers to

understand why the mouse is talking about a story, while Alice is talking about mouse's body part;

and why mouse meant he hadn't got to the fifth bend while Alice was talking about undo a knot.

When sound is considered, it became obvious, because of the similarities in the sound, they miss

understood each other. This could be very difficult to transfer into Chinese, as their counterpart

31

words in Chinese sound very dissimilar.

Tenor: This includes author's temporal, geographical, social provenance as well as his intellectual

emotional or affective stance (House, 1997:109).

The author is an academic scholar in various subject fields living in Victorian England.

Lexical means: Victorian concepts or phrase, such as afternoon tea, you fellows, how dreadfully

savage!

Textual means: Old spelling such as do'n't, ca'n't

The author's personal stance was that he originally created this story on a boat trip with three

young daughters of the Dean of Christchurch. Among them, Alice is the original model of the

protagonist of the story. The author created a lot of chaotic jokes based on wordplays, especially

in his parodies, for instance, "father William", which was originally a children's song advising

children to behave on moral grounds, was adapted into a joke literature making fun of the

original.

Lexical means: Wordplay based on forms, sound, and meaning.

Textual means: Poetic rhymes, for instance in father Williams, the word white rhymes right, fat,

that; son rhymes none; etc.

Social role relationship

Author-reader: Alice in Wonderland is a story made up for children to read, however, it is

enjoyed by adults too because of its wordplay jokes. His work is intelligent and humours, while

trying to get readers involved by creating conflicts and misunderstandings between his characters

using wordplay. He also entertains his readers by presenting parody poems, which both Alice and

the reader would have known the original. In the book, Alice was confused, yet readers recognise

the parodies.

32

Author-Character in story: Carroll created some characters in this book, yet did not give them

specific descriptions. However some of the character, because of their name have specific

meaning under the context, only people understand the culture might understand why these

character appear with certain characteristics. For instances, Hatter and March Hare appeared in

Chapter Seven Mad Tea Party. The cultural background was that this breed of rabbit would

behave madly in march as they turn mature and in heat. As for Hatters, they use to turn mad

because of this chemical involved in hat making. Yet although they talk madly and misunderstood

each other because of the author's wordplay, the author gave them serious personalities to

sharpen the contrast and satirical sense.

Alice-other characters: Alice tried to behave nicely like a Victorian girl, but because of all the

misunderstandings she had with other creatures in wonderland, she became angry and rude

sometimes. Plus creatures in wonderland don't use much phatic language or even have the

concept, and treat Alice as an outsider. For example in chapter three, when Dodo proposed a

"caucus-race", and stopped as if hoping someone would ask for further information; only Alice

complied with the scene. Another example in Chapter Seven would be when Alice is approaching

the table; the dormouse shouted that "no room!" which is not how people would treat others in

Victorian times.

Syntactic means: Interrupted sentences "for the immediate adoption of more energetic

remedies-" "Speak English!"; "I don't think----" "then you shouldn't talk!"

Textual means: The text is coherent in general, but Alice's talk about Dian, her cat, and her

misunderstandings caused by wordplay just make the conversation impossible to go on.

Social Attitude:

The book uses typical Victorian formal languages but doesn't have etiquettes involved. The

protagonist Alice behaves well like a Victorian girl yet asks too many questions which are not

appropriate in the social etiquettes. The poem parodied in the book was pedagogical and

moralistic children's song, giving the book satirical sense.

33

Mode:

Medium: The medium is simple; this book is written to be read privately or aloud.

Phonological means: The words to be emphasized are using italic style; the name of the parodies,

proper names was stressed by capitalizing the first letter; some special names or marks like

"Orange Marmalade" "Drink Me" was not only capitalized but also printed in changed font.

Textual means: Some of the wordplay or logical jokes need to be read to understand, but in

general, the text is coherent.

Participation: The participation is complex; there is monologue narration as well as dialogue

between characters.

Genre: This book is a mixed type. It is a Victorian Children's book yet it is satirical instead of being

pedagogical and moralistic. The poems chosen to be parodied are famous for children of the time.

Due to its wordplay and logical jokes, this book was also classified as non-sense literature.

Lecercle once commented that this book contains extreme qualities of both traditional and

folklore, poetic and childish, high and low (1994:197).

Statement of Function:

Being both a children's literature and a non-sense literature, Alice attracted both children and

adult readers, the ideational function of this book is to tell a story about Alice's adventure stories

in wonderland. The interpersonal function is marked: the writer, the protagonist of the story Alice,

and the English used in the book is Victorian; the story is classified as children's literature and

nonsense literature due to writer's imagination, wordplay as well as logical jokes. In the book, the

author showed his satirical view on educational poems by parodying them. The textual function

is marked by using English language as a means of making jokes, or creating confusion.

4.2Comparison of Original and Translation

In order to avoid repetition, I will mainly point out mismatches of the translation work, namely

34

the differences between the original and the translation.

4.2.1 Zhao's Alice in Wonderland

Field: A story about a girl named 阿丽思 and her experience in wonderland.

Textual means: The translator used some skills specific to the traits of Chinese Language to deal

with difficulties met when translating wordplay jokes in order to make the translation make sense

in Chinese.

For instance, the same part when Alice listened to the mouse's story:

"'Mine is a long and a sad tale!' said the Mouse, turning to Alice, and sighing.

'It is a long tail, certainly,' said Alice, looking down with wonder at the Mouse’s tail; “but

why do you call it sad?”

… …




'A knot!' said Alice, always ready to make herself useful, and looking anxiously about her.

'Oh, do let me help to undo it!'"

(Carroll, 1993:14-15)

那老鼠对着阿丽思叹了一口气道，“唉！我的历史说来可真是又长又苦又委屈呀，”

阿丽思听了，瞧着那老鼠的尾巴说，“你这尾是曲啊！可是为什么又叫它苦呢！”

。。。。。。

那老鼠说到这里，对阿丽思很严厉地道，“你不用心听着，你想到哪去啦？”

阿丽思很谦虚地道，“对不住，对不住。你说到了第五个弯弯儿嘞，不是吗？”那老

鼠很凶很怒地道，“我没有到！”

阿丽思道，“你没有刀吗？让我给你找一把罢！”（阿丽思说着四面瞧瞧，因为她总喜

欢帮人家的忙。）

(The mouse signed and saying to Alice "ah, my history is long sad and wronged,"

Alice looked at the mouse's tail said:" your tail is curvy, but why do you call it sad?"

… …

The mouse stopped and said to Alice seriously:"you are not listening attentively, what

you are thinking about?"

Alice said humbly:"sorry sorry, you are at the 5th turn, aren't you?" the mouse said to

Alice angrily "I haven't!"

Alice said:" you don't have a knife? Let me find you one!" (She's looking around while

saying this, because she is always willing to help others out.)

（Zhao, 1922: 20-21）

35

Here, 历史 means tale, because it is nearly impossible to connect 历史 with 尾巴(tail) in Chinese

language, the translator gave it another similar adjective 委屈(wronged) which sounds exactly

like 尾曲(zigzag tail). Then Zhao make Alice asking" the tail is indeed zigzag, but why call it sad?"

As for the "knot" joke, the translator made up his own version, because 到 and 刀 have the same

sound in Chinese, here, the translator concentrate on transfer the meaning instead of translate

the words.

Tenor: The translator was educated in China for a bachelor degree, and then became the second

group of people in China first sent to the US to study. Graduated with a PHD, he came back to

China to teach Morden Language, General Linguists and Chinese Phonological Studies in Tsinghua

University. He has a great talent in language and phonology. He mastered French, German,

English, besides that, He has a profound understanding of his mother tongue, Chinese. He was

considered "the father of Chinese linguistics study". And by the time he, for the first time,

translated Alice in wonderland into Chinese in 1921, Chinese language was in a transition state

from ancient to modern. He tried to replace unfamiliar western concepts with Chinese

counterparts, and gave the story a strong Chinese scene. And his parody is extremely rhyming

and the form is close to an ancient Chinese poem, this makes his parody form very similar to that

of the original. By altering the word, his parody also presented the ironic sense, although his

readers would not know about the original verse which was being parodied.

Lexical means: A lot of complicated characters used as interjections: 罢，嘞，唉，喔，呵 etc. using

Chinese words like 新年，田场，蝙蝠子，火筷子，冰淇淋，芝麻酱，etc to replace words like

"Christmas, field, bat, red-hot poker, toffee, hot buttered toast" respectively, with儿 at the end of

a word, the translator render the story in Beijing dialect, omitted word like "tunnel" during

translation as there was no such concepts in Chinese.

Syntactic means: Some sentences are very casually written, close to colloquial phrase. Such as 不

碍事，还掘苹果呢，你这笨鹅！etc. Also, according to Chinese habit, description of status are

always been placed before a direct quote.

36

The relationship between the author-translator and reader is marked: the translator uses very

Beijing styled words, concepts and non-formal or even colloquial expressions to translate

conversations and certain concepts that were not familiar to the readers at his time. By doing this,

he tried to make his reader feel as close to the story as possible, as if it were a local story. But he

didn't try to replace the cultural specific elements in the book with equivalent Chinese culture.

For instance he preserved words like "miles, pence," other than replace them with "kilometres,

or Chinese Li (half kilometre), fen." And the mouse's story of William the Conqueror was

re-expressed in ancient Chinese to stress that the mouse was seriously talking.

Mode: The emphasis was changed from using italics into using dots marked under the Chinese

character. And some font change was accordant with the original book, some are not. For

instance, "Orange Marmalade" has a font change while in the translation it doesn't.

Genre: The text was classified as children's book, foreign literature.

Statement of Quality: This translation tried to use Beijing dialect and very colloquial expression

to make it sound more like a recreation of the original in Chinese other than a "second original",

translator's efforts marked this translation to be an obvious covert translation. Although there

are no omissions or additions to the content, the author still made his own adaption when it

comes to wordplay translation, just like the example listed above. The language used in the

translation is less formal than the original.

4.2.2 Wang's Alice in Wonderland

Field: A story about a girl named 爱丽丝 and her experience in wonderland.

Textual means: The translator translated wordplay into Chinese literally as they were written in

English, without explaining most of them. There are 14 footnotes in the book, among them 8

footnotes were related to explaining pun used in the book. Others are used to explain cultural

related items, for instance footnote on page 88 "英语中有 as mad as a march hare, 意味疯的像

是三月（交尾期）里的野兔(in English there's a saying 'as mad as a march hare', means being as

crazy as rabbit in March, because that’s when they enter mating season ". However, it is not yet

37

clear as how or why the author only chose to explain very few puns instead of all of them.

Tenor: The translator is educated in China; graduated from Shanghai St. John's University

majored in English and Chinese Studies. Later was sent to work abroad as editor, translator, and

proof-reader. He mastered English, Russian, Spanish, and Italian. The translator was born in 1927,

that's 6 years after Zhao translated Alice, and by the time he started to study language, basic

modern Chinese language system has already been set up. He translated Alice in 2000 under the

request of 肖毛. In his translation, he tried to maintain the original style of the book, he used

equally formal words and expressions like the original, but his parody is less in rhythm, and more

like a prose compared to the original. This might be a result of modern Chinese language

affection.

Lexical means: The word used as interjections are much simpler, there is no complicated Chinese

characters. The concepts confined to English culture are kept as well, such as圣诞(Christmas), 太

妃糖(Toffee),热的黄油土司(hot-buttered toast). The language is standard Chinese, without any

dialect characteristics. Although this book was intended for children, he still used some high

sense vocabulary such as"贸然行事(do something without thinking), 筋疲力尽(tired out), 乏味

(a more advanced way of saying boring)" etc.

Syntactic means: Here, in this translation, Chinese sentence structure was more relaxed, the

description part goes both in front of as well as after a direct quotation. Compared to the original,

sentence order didn't change so much.

The relation between the author-translator and reader is not marked: The author used very

standard Chinese and very formal language and phrases thus kept the original style. The

translator tried to make sure the reader is looking at the exact translation of the original version.

Although he explained some puns in the translation, others were not explained, and thus very

easy to cause confusion for the reader. For instance:





38


(Carroll, 1993:14-15)

"你不专心听!" 老鼠严厉地对爱丽丝说，：你在想什么?"

"请你原谅,"爱丽丝十分恭敬地说,"你已经讲到第五道弯了吗?"

"没有!"老鼠非常生气地尖声地嚷道。

"什么?一个结头!"爱丽丝时刻准备帮别人的忙，她急切地四下张望。"哦，让我帮你

解开吧!"

("You are not attending!" The mouse said seriously to Alice, "what are you thinking?"

"Excuse me," Alice said moderately, "you have arrived at the fifth bend?"

"No, I had not!" the mouse cried angrily.

"What? A knot!" Alice was always ready to help, she looked around, "oh, let me help you

untie it!")

（Wang, 2000: 41）

This translation is almost exact with the original, however, in Chinese, because 没有 and 结头 are

two different words, with completely different sounds, although the reader realized that they

were not understanding each other, they can't tell what exactly went wrong from the sentences.

Without the help of footnotes, it was impossible to enjoy what the original reader would enjoy.

Mode: The original emphasis was completely removed.


Overt Errors:

The following lexical error completely changed the original meaning. Although it made sense in

another way, also in Chinese, but it failed to convey the original meaning.

…"We went to school in the sea. The master was an old Turtle—we used to call him

Tortoise—"

"Why did you call him Tortoise, if he wasn't one?" Alice asked.

"We called him Tortoise because he taught us," said the Mock Turtle angrily. "Really you

are very dull!"

(Carroll, 1993: 94-95)

…"我们在海里上学。教师是个老海龟，我们管它叫做玳瑁。"

"如果他不是玳瑁的话，你们为什么要叫他玳瑁呢？"爱丽丝问道。

"他教我们叫它玳瑁,"假海龟生气地说，"你真笨!"

(…"we studied in the sea. The teacher is a very old turtle, we called him Daimao."

"if he is not a Daimao, why would you call him Daimao?" Alice asked.

39

"He taught us to call it Daimao," Mock Turtle said angrily, "you are so dull!")

(Wang, 2000: 134)

Here, the original joke was the "Tort-oise" sounds like Taught-us, so the author meant to say that

because he used to teach us so we call him tortoise. But the translator, although he used the

word 教 which means teach, or let in Chinese, his translation meant it is because the Tortoise told

us to call him Tortoise. So, here, the translator didn't really get the joke in the original text.

However, the joke would work simply in Chinese; it is easy to understand that mock turtle called

his teacher a Daimao simply because he was told to.

Statement of Quality: This translation tried to maintain the original style and be faithful to the

original content by using equally formal language and expression. Because of the different

language system, however, the original language was marked by Victorian spelling, the

translation version used very standard Chinese characters, and this might because Chinese can't

really be marked by its spelling, which maybe can only be to separate the ancient and modern

Chinese. So, this book is a mixture with most parts being covert translation, and some are overt

translation, as the translation was made obvious by footnotes.

4.2.3 Wu's Alice's Adventure in Wonderland

Field: A story about a girl named 爱丽丝 and her experience in wonderland.

Textual means: The translator used explanation techniques as well as footnotes in order to deal

with wordplays. For instance: in Chapter One when Alice finally finished the fall, ran after the

rabbit and heard the rabbit said:"Oh my ears and whiskers, how late it's getting!" the translator

translates:"哦，我的耳朵和硬须呀!" 等于说:"我的天呀, 现在多么晚了呀!"("oh, my ears and

whiskers!" it means "oh my god, how late it is!")

As for footnotes, there are 65 footnotes all together in the book, among them 50 was dedicated

to explain puns and parodies, the rest of them were to explain some other cultural specific items,

for instance, plants, and toys that are not common in China.

Besides the two mentioned above, the author did make his own effort in translating wordplay as

40

well, he would just add footnote to explain more what he did. For instance:

"You promised to tell me your history, you know," said Alice, "and why it is you hate—C

and D," she added in a whisper, half afraid that it would be offended again"

(Carroll, 1993:35)

"你知道，你答应过把你的历史告诉我的,"爱丽丝说."以及你为什么憎恨——喵喵和

汪汪①

."她悄没声儿地加上这一句，有些害怕说明白了又会冒犯它。

① 原文此处是 C and D，暗指猫(cat)和狗(dog)。上文说老鼠对它们又恨又怕，因

此这里爱丽丝不明说。

(Wu, 2010: 29)

Here, 喵喵 and 汪汪 are two sound words used in Chinese to mimicry the call of cats and dogs.

Although here the author used his own version, he still explained the original in the footnotes.

Another example is that

……




(Carroll, 1993: 94-95)

"我没干这一切!"老鼠非常生气地尖叫起来。

"你打了一个结②

?"爱丽丝说，她老是随时准备出把力，所以心急地四处找什么,"哦,

让我一定帮你解开这个结!"

② 上一句"我没干这一切"的原文是"I had not!""not"与此句中的"knot"(结)发音相同,

作者用两个同音字做笔墨游戏.

(WU, 2010: 31)

Here, 切 and 结 both ends with the sound "ie" in Chinese. The translator not only put his own

effort in solving this wordplay, but also explained the original one in his footnotes.

Tenor: The translator was educated in China and appointed Shanghai director of Translation

Association. He re-translated Alice in wonderland in 2010. In his translation, he remained the

original style and content to the maximum. He use standard Chinese but not very formal phrase

or sentences, instead he used equally colloquial expressions for conversations.

Lexical means: Interjections used at the end of a direct quote such as"呀，啊，吗，啦，哪，嘛

", etc, make the conversion more colloquial within the standard Chinese frames. All the western

concepts are kept as it is in the original.

41

The relationship between the author-translator and reader is marked: The translator reminds

his reader that the book is a "second original" by using footnotes. His translation is very loyal to

the original content and style.

Mode: The emphasis was presented by adding dots under equivalent Chinese characters, but the

font changes in the original were lost in the translation.


Statement of Quality: This translation is a very obvious overt translation. The translator was very

loyal to the original work, both in style and content, although there are some format changes and

additions like the example discussed above, which showed traits of covert translation.

4.3 Discussion of the Results and Time's Effect on Wordplay Translation

As we have reached a basic understanding that those three different translations have different

qualities. Zhao's Alice is a covert translation; Wang's Alice is a mix of Covert and Overt Translation,

while Wu's Alice is an obvious overt translation. During the discussion, we will look more closely

how different quality can affect wordplay specifically in each case, then discuss if those

differences are related to times.

4.3.1 Proper Names

Of all the proper names in the book, protagonist Alice is a very interesting one. Alice was

originated from Greek, means "the truth". The writer put Alice in wonderland who was supposed

to speak for the truth or the normal. There's a contrast sense between the name and all the

weird experiences. When we looked at tree difference translation, 阿丽思,爱丽丝,爱丽丝, we

could started to see the difference. By the time Zhao translated Alice, there's no standard name

charts to search, and Zhao created his own version which not only showed the pronunciation, but

also the original meaning, Zhao used the word 思 in Chinese, which means to think, or being

thoughtful, reflect the contrast between a girl who should be thoughtful yet talk non-sense in the

book, while other two translators just used the standard version and the meaning got lost in the

42

translation. The same thing happened in English language over time, Alice became just a name,

other than a name with a meaning.

Another name that can reflect the times effect is Pat. Zhao translated as 八升, is a typical Chinese

name used in old China by inferior class. While other two translated it as 帕特，佩特 both are

translated according to the sound. The same thing happened to the name Bill the lizard, Zhao's

version was 毕二爷, 毕 sounds like bi in Chinese, it not only took the sound form, but also added

二爷，which is a typical way of calling someone less important but still in charge in a big old

Chinese family, while Wang's translation is 比尔, which is the standard translation for bill

according to its sound. Wu's translation is more interesting ,壁儿, it took the sound bi as well but

using the Chinese character 壁, which reminds people of gecko in Chinese, gecko looks like a

small lizard. These translation examples not only fit in with the books translation qualities but

also showed the characteristics of the times when it was translated. One more example would be

their translation of The Lory, which refers to Alice's sister Lorina. The Translation of Lory in Zhao's

version is very interesting, he used an informal name 鹦哥儿, which is how parrots are called in

old Beijing area in Zhao's time and in Chinese it means parrot-brother. By using this name, he

coincidentally solved the later problem when this Lory character had an arguement with Alice,

Lory said "I am older than you, and must know better"(Alice in wonderland, P32), and Zhao

translated "我到底是你哥哥，我肯定比你知道"(I am your brother, I sure know better). Thus,

because there is the meaning of brother in this character's name, he certainly assumes he is

older than others. The joke was successfully translated, despite the Chinese reader doesn't know

Lory was referring to Alice's sister Lorina. The joke was lost in the other two translations, Wang

translated to 鹦鹉，while Wu's 吸蜜小鹦鹉 is even more academically correct.

We could see that works that was translated in the different historical times have very different

way in translating certain proper names, the 1922 version would use Chinese characters that may

be less standard for today, and use some traditional appellation or dialect while dealing with

proper names, while Wu's translation are very close to that of Wang's version. This might

because they are relatively close considering the time they were translated. So we could

conclude that time has a very strong effect on proper name translation.

43

All the translation of proper names and their intended meanings are listed in a form in Appendix I,

and attached at the back of the thesis as appendix. Among them, the proper name whose

translation was affected by time is marked yellow. Translators overt attitude are market by

footnotes in green. We could reach the same conclusion by looking at the table.

4.3.2 Puns

As we have analyzed earlier that three books are different in quality. Zhao's version is a covert

translation; Wang's translation is a mix between covert translation and overt translation, while

Wu's translation is an overt translation.

As for the discussion in pun translation, I will pick one pun each for four difficult pun types to

discuss how they fit in their quality type and why time is the factor that affected them to be

translated the way they are.

Homophony:

"…you see the earth takes 24 hours to turn round on its axis—"

"Talking of axes," said the Duchess, "chop off her head!" (Carroll, 1993: 63)

"…你瞧，地球要二十四小时围着地轴转一回——"

那公爵夫人道,"还说斧子呢，砍掉她的头!" （Zhao, 1922: 49）

"…你知道，地球绕地轴转一次要二十四个小时."

"提起斧子 ch,"公爵夫人说,"把她的头砍掉!" (Wang, 2000: 82)

"你瞧，地球二十四小时绕着它的轴自转弗止——"

"提起了斧子 ch,"公爵夫人说道，:"把她的脑袋砍掉"

("Look, the earth turn round on its axis 24/7 nonstop—"

"Now you mentioned axes," said the Duchess, "chop off her head!")

(Wu, 2010: 61)

Here, axis and axes formed a pair of pun. Zhao's translation was still trying to make sense,

although he didn't translate this pun, he utilized one of Chinese linguistic features, which is

exactly the same meaning and function as the phrase "talking of something" in English. He

translated like this :" 还说斧子呢！…砍掉她的头!" "还说..呢" is usually used to stress whatever

44

was mentioned before in context. By using this phrase, he made his reader aware that a problem

occurred between the two speakers. However, he didn't use any other techniques, thus it is

impossible for a non-english speaking reader to understand why this is misunderstanding even

occurr. Wang simply used footnotes to explain to his readers that this is a pun. And WU not only

provided a very interesting way to tackle the pun but also used footnote to explain the pun to his

readers. In his translation, he added the notion "nonstop", which he used a made up Chinese

word of the correct version. The correct version would be"不止"（bu zhi）。 Instead, he used the

word 弗止(Fu zhi) which has a very similar sound with 斧子(Fu zi) although by adding those two

words it shifts the importance and the meaning of the whole sentence, it still transfers the pun to

his reader. Although he successfully translated the pun, he still added footnotes explaining this

pun, which made the translator visible.

Paronymy:

After Alice told the cat that the baby turned into a pig, the cat came back later and asked

"Did you say pig or fig?" said the Cat.

(Carroll, 1993: 68)

那猫问:"你刚才说猪还是书?"

(Zhao, 1922: 53)

"你刚才说的是'猪'还是'无花果'?"猫说。

(Wang, 2000: 90)

"你刚才说的是'猪娃'还是'无花果'?"那猫问道。

(Wu, 2010: 68)

Like always, Zhao used two words share the sound 'U' in Chinese to translate the pun, while the

other two translators chose to be loyal to the original content and explain the pun in footnotes.

Polysemy:

During the tea party, Alice and Hatter was talking about time, Hatter said

"I dare say you never even spoke to Time!"

"Perhaps not," Alice curiously replied:"but I know I have to beat time when I learn

music."

(Carroll, 1993: 73)

"我猜你同时候连话都没有说过!"

阿丽思答道,"或者没有。可是我知道我学音乐的时候要得拍时候的."

(Zhao, 1922: 58)

45

"我敢肯定你从来没同时间说过话!"

"也许没有,"爱丽丝谨慎地回答,"但是我学音乐的时候知道要打拍子."

(Wang, 2000: 98)

"我敢说你甚至从来都不曾跟时间谈过话!"

"也许是吧,"爱丽丝小心翼翼地说,"但是我知道我学音乐的时候不得不打拍子 ch."

(Wu, 2010: 74)

This is a very famous pun in the book, and its translation was definitely affected by when it was

translated. By the time Zhao translated Alice, Western music concepts started to get into China,

so the phrase beat time didn't have a universal translation back then. and the word 时候 is very

Beijing dialect vocabulary, that's maybe why Zhao choose to use 时候, instead of 时间, so that

the vocabulary fits in with the whole style.

Malapropism:

"Curiouser! And Curiouser!" Alice cried (she was so much surprised that for the moment

she quite forgot how to speak good English).

(Carroll, 1993: 24)

"越变越奇罕了，越变越稀怪了!"(因为阿丽思自己诧异到那么个样子,连话都说不好

了);

(Zhao, 1922: 8)

"越来越离奇了!" 爱丽丝嚷道(她惊异之下竟然忘了正规的英语用法).

(Wang, 2000: 19)

"真是越奇怪，真是越奇怪了!"爱丽丝嚷嚷着说(她惊讶得了不得,以至于此刻她把如

何说好英语忘的一干二净了).

(Wu, 2010: 14)

We could see from here that only Zhao's version actually translated this wordplay. The original

pun was a play on English grammar, the correct way of expressing would be "more curious",

there is no such word as curiouser as a comparative. And Zhao miss matched two Chinese words,

奇怪 and 稀罕, which means strange and rare or weird, and he translated the joke, and also add

that "she was so shocked that she couldn't even speak properly". He didn't mention anything

about English. While the other two translators both chose to be loyal to the original, and the pun

was lost in the translation. Although Wang's version mentioned that the wordplay was based on

the English Grammar in the brackets, he didn't really explain as to how it is not correct. Wu's

version was very faithful to the original content.

46

From the four cases above, we could see that the historical times the work was translated only

affected the attitude of how to translated the pun, either fit in with a covert translation (namely

translate the pun into a pun) or overt translation (namely not translate the pun but explain it).

Unless there are certain words that may be translated into a word that was used back then, and

may not be used the same way in another time, times as a factor doesn't seem to affect how the

pun was actually translated.

All the puns and their translations are listed in a form 2 in Appendix II, the ones affected by time

are marked in yellow, and translator's overt attitude was marked with footnotes in green. Looking

at the table, we could reach the same conclusion.

4.3.3 Parodies

Of all the parodies, the most famous might be You are old, Father William, the original verse is

The Old Man's Comforts and How He Gained Them by Robert Southey. The poem has eight verses,

I will just include four verses here:

"You are old, father William," the young man

said,

"And your hair has become very white;

And yet you incessantly stand on your head--

Do you think, at your age, it is right?"

"In my youth," father William replied to his

son,

"I feared it might injure the brain;

But now that I'm perfectly sure I have none,

Why, I do it again and again."

"You are old," said the youth, "and your jaws

are too weak

For anything tougher than suet;

Yet you finished the goose, with the bones and

the beak--

Pray, how did you manage to do it?"

"In my youth," said his father, "I took to the


cried,

"The few locks which are left you are grey;

You are hale, father William, a hearty old man;

Now tell me the reason, I pray."

"In the days of my youth," father William

replied,

"I remember'd that youth would fly fast,

And abus'd not my health and my vigour at

first,

That I never might need them at last."


cried,

"And life must be hast'ning away;

You are cheerful and love to converse upon

death;

Now tell me the reason, I pray."

"I am cheerful, young man," father William

47

law,

And argued each case with my wife;

And the muscular strength, which it gave to my

jaw,

Has lasted the rest of my life."

(Carroll, 1993:, 51-53)

replied,

"Let the cause thy attention engage;

In the days of my youth I remember'd my God!

And He hath not forgotten my age"

(Gardner, 2000: 226)

"威廉师傅你这么老，

你的头发白又白；

倒竖蜻蜓，你这么巧——

你想这样儿该不该？

先生答到,"我那时小，

怕把脑子跌去来；

现在脑子我没多少，

天天练武随便摔."

威廉师傅你这么弱，

只该喝点汤光汤，

吃鸡带骨头还叫饿，

这样你胃口伤不伤？

威廉答道,"我做知县,

太太总要来帮我忙,

件件案子要扭着我辩,

所以练得我嘴这么强."

(Zhao, 1922: 39)

你老啦，威廉老爹，

年轻人说

你的头发已经很白

可你仍旧老是拿大顶，

你觉得你这种年纪是否应该？

我年轻时，

威廉老爹回答他的儿子

我曾担心会损伤脑筋

可我现在完全确信我根本没有脑

子

于是我就一次又一次地玩起拿大

顶。

你老啦，年轻人说，

你的牙口不好，

照说除了肥肉什么都吃不了，

可是你啃掉了那只鹅，连骨头都

不剩，

请问你怎么能做到？

我年轻时，父亲说，

对法律有了兴趣，

事无大小都要同我妻子争论，

我练就了有力的脸部肌肉，

一辈子受用不尽。

(Wang, 2000: 66)

那个青年说，你老了，威廉爸

爸;

很白很白呀，你的头发

可是你一刻不停地竖蜻蜓，好

起劲——

你这把年纪，这么玩儿行不

行？

威廉爸爸回答他的儿子说：

年轻时，只怕脑子会伤着，

可现在我完全肯定自己没脑

子，

所以我一玩再玩也没事。

那个青年说，你老了，牙齿不

顶用，

比板油硬点的，你就嚼不动，

然而你却把鹅连骨带喙都吃

光——

请说说你究竟如何往肚里装?

爸爸说：年轻时，我学的是法

律，

老婆跟我辩论每一件案例，

因此体力强，肌肉健，下颚坚，

这叫我享用一直到晚年.

(Wu, 2010: 48)

Compare the original verse and the parody, we could tell that the parody was making fun of the

moral teaching of the original. For instance, the original teaches us youth fly fast, so father

preserve the health and vigour yet to find out he might not need them at last, while the parody

48

explained that father feared standing on his head would injure his brain when he was young, and

found out he doesn't have brain when he got old, so he do it again and again. Through the parody,

the moral lessons were laughed at.

When we look at the translations, it is clear that Zhao's version took the form of a poem. For

instance, it rhymed at the sound 'ao' by using characters:老，巧，小，少，and the sound "ai"

through words 白，该，来，摔. In one pair of verses, also the rhythm is arranged the way an old

Chinese poem would arrange. The number of the characters in each line is almost the same. And

the other two translations are more relaxed about the forms and rhythms so that they look and

sound like prose. They have less rhythm and the rhythms are less regularly arranged. For instance,

in Wang's version, in the first verse, there's no rhythm. In the second verse, the second line

rhythms the fourth, and the third with the fifth. While in the third verse, the rhythms changed to

line 2 and 3. The irregular rhythm can be seen in Wu's translation as well. However, Wang's

version is very loyal to the original content, while Wu's version not only has his own way of

translating the parody, but also adds the footnote explaining that this was a parody, and

introduced the original poem.

Also, we could see there are words in Zhao's version indicating the time it was translated. For

instance "练武，知县，案子."Back in Zhao's time there was no Chinese concept as a lawyer, so he

used something close, 知县 was someone who rules a small county, and is in charge of conflicts

between its local citizens.

In general, besides the translation attitude, we could see that historical times which the book was

translated in affects parodies both on its forms, the way it rhythms, and how certain words are

translated.

Three parodies was chosen to be listed in the form in Appendix III with its translations, same

rhyming was marked by bold characters in black and blue colour, we could reach the same

conclusion by just looking at the form.

49

Chapter 5 Conclusions

5.1 Conclusions

This thesis sets out to study the historical times which the work was translated in as a translation

quality assessment criterion, if it would affects translation quality, and how it affects the

wordplay translation. The thesis first looked at historical translation quality assessment criteria

and method to see what theories have been proposed to assess a translation. Among all different

translation quality assessment methods, House's TQA model was chosen to assess three different

translation versions. In methodology part, TQA model was elaborated in detail, and how the

three different translation versions were chosen, as well as what the wordplays are in Alilce in

Wonderland.

After analyzing the original and comparing three translations, a general translation quality type is

determined, that Zhao's version is a covert translation, Wang's version is a mix between covert

translation and overt translation, and Wu's translation is an overt translation, this was mainly due

to the times differences between the translations. In the discussion part, times effects on

wordplay translation was looked more closely, analysis was given as for how times actually affect

the wordplay translation.

In conclusion, time should be considered as a very important criterion that affects the translation

quality. Time affects the way the wordplay is translated. It affects the proper name and parody

translation more than the puns. For Proper Names, the earlier the translation, the more atypical

the name could be translated. As for parodies, the earlier the translation, the more it was

translated using the form of traditional Chinese poems. While puns are rarely affected as

translators either decides to translate the pun, which earlier translators did, or not translate the

pun but adding footnotes to explain it. When there are words which evolve with time involved,

the translation was affected as well. Also, the longer the time differences between the

translations, the larger the differences in translation quality would be.

5.2 Limitation of the Study

Although it is concluded that times should be looked at as a translation assessment criteria,

50

because times is a very wide concept, it includes many factors, such as the social conditions back

then, people's attitude towards translation and foreign culture, government policies etc. Also, if a

culture doesn't change much for many decades, times' effect on translation may not be present

in the different translations from different times.

51

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54

Appendix I Proper Names Translation and Meaning Form

Name Translation Related Meaning

Zhao (1922) Wang (2000) Wu(2010)

ALICE 阿丽思爱丽丝爱丽丝 a Greek word meaning truth or without madness

THE WHITE RABBIT 兔子/白兔子兔子/白兔大白兔

DINAH THE CAT 黛那黛娜戴娜

THE MOUSE 耗子老鼠老鼠

THE DODO 鸵鸟渡渡鸟渡渡鸟+footnotes Dodo is an extinct bird which was about the size of a swan, covered

with down instead of feathers, with short, strong legs, and wings too

small for flight; also means a stupid person. This name is the

pronunciation of Dodgson (the author) while stammering.

THE EAGLET 小鹰儿小雕小鹰+footnotes Represents Alice’s sister Edith in real life

THE LORY 鹦哥儿鹦鹉吸蜜小鹦鹉

+footnotes

Represents Alice’s elder sister Lorina in real life

THE DUCK 鸭子鸭子母鸭+footnotes

PAT 八升帕特佩特

MARY ANN 玛理安玛丽•安玛丽•安恩

BILL THE LIZARD 毕二爷比尔壁儿

THE CATERPILLAR 毛毛虫毛毛虫毛毛虫

THE DUCHESS 公爵夫人公爵夫人公爵夫人

THE CHESHIRE CAT 歙县猫

柴郡猫柴郡猫+footnotes Cheshire is a big place in England and there is a breed of cat from

that region, from where the idiom “to grin like a Cheshire Cat”

comes from.

THE MARCH HARE 三月兔三月野兔

+footnotes

三月里的野兔

+footnotes

The hare is said to be mad in March because of the frenzied antics of

these animals during their rutting time in that month.

55

THE HATTER 帽匠制帽匠制帽匠+footnotes In Britain, because hatters worked with mercury. The phrase as mad

as a hatter is of unknown origin but probably of ironical force

originally from the character of the type now somewhat duplicated

by the male milliner or dressmaker. I think mad as a hatter came

about from hat makers using mercury and becoming poisoned from

it over time which made them insane.

THE DORMOUSE 惰儿鼠睡鼠榛睡鼠+footnotes This is a type of mouse which is usually found in houses, different

from those in fields (field mouse). The Dormouse is a sleeping

mouse, eats nuts, suggesting the squirrel of present-day slang or the

American species to which it is most closely related. It goes into a

stupor during cold weather. Dormire in Latin means to sleep, while

there's no need to explain the rest of the word.

THE KING 皇帝陛下国王国王

THE QUEEN 皇后陛下王后王后

THE KNAVE 心牌戛客红心杰克红心杰克

GRYPHON 骨勑凤狮身鹰首兽格里芬+footnotes Gryphon is the original spelling of griffin, a legendary creature with

the head, talons, and wings of an eagle and the body of a lion.

THE MOCK TURTLE 素甲鱼假海龟假海龟 The mock is the person who makes fun of other people. So is this

character in the story.

56

Appendix II Puns Form

Pun The Type Explanation

Antipathies-19 Malapropism Alice wants to say “The Antipodes” but cannot remember the right word.

Cats eat bats- bats eat cats-20 Paronym The sentence rhymes even when the subject and the object are switched.

The fall-20 Homonymy The season (Alice falls upon a heap of dry leaves) and the act of falling.

Shut up like telescope-22 Simile To express the act of becoming shorter

In my going out altogether, like a candle-22 Simile To express the act of shrinking

Curiouser and curiouser! – 24 Malapropism Growing so fast, Alice forgets how to speak English properly

I’m opening like the largest telescope- 24 Simile To express the act of becoming taller

Great girl-25 Homonymy Great girl both grown up in person and length

By being drowned in my own tears-29 Polysemy Both figuratively and literally

This is the driest thing i know-32 Homonymy The Mouse tells the most boring story to dry them up.

Tale-tail-35 Homophony Alice thinks that the Mouse is talking about his tale being long and sad

I had not!...A knot!-37 Paronym Alice misunderstands the response

An old crab...the patience of an oyster-38 Polysemy A crab is both a sea animal and a grouchy, irritable person

Grow up... grown up-41 Polysemy To grow up in age and literally in length

Explain yourself…I can't explain myself...I am not

myself, you see-50

Homograph Two different usages of “myself”

Axis-axes-63 Homophony Alice is talking about the axis of the Earth but the Duchess thinks of axes

Pig, or fig?-68 Paronym Similarity of pronunciation

Time.. to beat time-73 Polysemy Time is considered as a person by the Hatter and the March Hare

Learning to draw...what did they draw… they draw

the treacle from-76-77

Homonymy Draw from a well vs. Draw a picture

They were in the well, they were...well in. 77 Homonymy Well as a noun in the first sentence and an adjective in the other one.

57

Off with their heads…are their heads off? Their

heads are gone, -83

Polysemy Alice hides their heads in a flowerpot, so their heads were really gone.

Flamingoes and mustard both bite-90 Polysemy Flamingoes bite with their beaks whereas mustard bites in one’s mouth

Mustard mine...mine...the more there is of mine the

less there is of yours-91

Homograph Mine as a noun first and then as a pronoun

Either you or your head must be off...-92 Polysemy Cut off or leave

Tortoise...he taught us- 95 Paronym Just a non-sense reason why they called the teacher ‘tortoise’

We went to school every day...I have been to a day

school too- 96

Polysemy Attended school during day time

Reeling and Writhing -96 Malapropism Reading and Writing

Ambition, Distraction, Uglification and Derision-96 Malapropism Addition, Subtraction, Multiplication and Division

Mystery, Seaography, Drawling, Stretching and

Fainting in Coil-97

Malapropism History, Geography, Drawing, Sketching and Painting in Oil

Old crab-97 Polysemy Crab is someone with bad temper as well as a sea animal

Laughing and Grief-97 Malapropism Latin and Greek

Lessons.. lessen -97 Paronym Lesson as a noun and to lessen the hours

At dinn-…where dinn may be..101 Homograph Alice meant to say at dinner but stops in the middle of the word

Whiting...it does the boots and the shoes...are done

with whiting 102

Paronym Whiting the fish and Whiting, to make something white.

Soles and eels-102 Paronym Shoes and boots are made of “Soles and Heels”

Porpoise... purpose-102 Paronym They mix the two words because of their paronymous similarity

I hadn't begun my tea-twinkling of the tea-...it began

with the tea...of course twinkling begins with a

T...-111

Paronym The confusion of T’s (The letter T and the drink Tea)

I am a poor man…poor speaker-112 Homograph He is financially poor, also not a good speaker

58

Before she had this fit... you never had fits...then the

words don't fit you-120-121

Homograph The verb ‘to fit’ is used in two different meanings.

59

Appendix III Puns Translation Form

pun translation

Zhao (1922) Wang (2000) Wu (2010)

Antipathies-19 倒猪世界-倒足世界-3 反感-11 讨厌的家伙+footnotes-7

Cats eat bats- bats eat cats-20 猫子吃蝙蝠子吗？蝙子吃猫蝠

子吗？-4

猫吃不吃蝙蝠？蝙蝠吃不吃

猫？-12

猫儿吃不吃蝙蝠呢？蝙蝠吃不

吃猫儿呢？-8

The fall-20 一掉，一跤-4 坠落-12 下降-8

Shut up like telescope-22 像望远镜似的，一缩就缩小-5 像望远镜那样在抽缩-16 像一副望远镜那样缩拢起来了

-12

In my going out altogether, like a candle-22 尽缩缩缩到没有了，如同吹灭了

的蜡烛的火苗一样-6

像蜡烛一样熄灭-17 我这样彻底小下去，有可能像一

只蜡烛那样完结的-12

Curiouser and curiouser! – 24 越变越奇罕了，越变越希怪了！

-8

越来越离奇了！-19 真是越奇怪，真是越奇怪了！-14

I’m opening like the largest telescope- 24 大到像顶大的望远镜那么大了

了！-8

像世界上最大的望远镜似的伸

开了-19

像一副世界上最大的望远镜那

样伸展开来-14

Great girl-25 像你这么大的孩子-9 像你这样的一个大姑娘-21 像你这样一个大女孩子-15

By being drowned in my own tears-29 淹死在我自己的眼泪里-12 淹死在自己的泪水里了！-27 淹死在我自己的眼泪里了-19

This is the driest thing i know-32 天下再没像这样又干又暖的了

-17

我有一个最干燥的办法-31 没有什么比这件事更干巴巴的

+footnotes -25

Tale-tail-35 历史委屈-尾曲-21 故事悲惨-长尾巴+footnotes-39 故事很惨 - 尾巴是很长

+footnotes-29

I had not!...A knot!-37 没有到！。。。-一把刀！-21 没有！。。。一个结头！-41 没干这一切！打了一个结！

+footnotes-31

An old crab...the patience of an oyster-38 老螃蟹。。。蛤蛎都会不耐烦

-21-23

老螃蟹。。。牡蛎都忍不住要开口

了！-42

老螃蟹…牡蛎的耐心+footnotes

-31

60

Grow up... grown up-41 长大了。。。没地方再长了-28 长大。。。没有空间再长大了-48 长大了…没地发再容我长大了

-36

Explain yourself…I can't explain myself...I am not

myself, you see-50

把你自己招出来。。我不能把我

自己招出来，因为我不是我自己

-35

把自己的意思解释清楚。。恐怕

做不到。。我不是我自己-60

你自己解释一下。。我自己没法

解释。。我不是我自己-44

Axis-axes-63 地轴-还说斧子呢 -49 地轴-提起斧子+footnotes-82 绕轴自转弗止 - 提起了斧子

+footnotes-61

Pig, or fig?-68 猪还是书？-53 猪还是无花果+footnotes -90 猪娃还是无花果+footnotes-68

Time…to beat time-73 时候…拍时候-58 时间…打拍子-98 时间。。。打拍子+footnotes-74

Learning to draw...what did they draw… they draw

the treacle from-76-77

学抽…她们抽什么？…抽糖-61 学画画…画什么…蜜糖-103 学汲取…汲取什么呀？…糖浆呀

-78-79

They were in the well, they were...well in. 77 她们在井里头——尽尽里头-62 她们当然在井里,并且待得很舒

服-105

她们在井里边呀，她们当然如此

了——紧里边+footnotes-79

Off with their heads…are their heads off? Their

heads are gone, -83

砍掉他们的头…头掉了么？头都

掉了-67

砍掉他们的脑袋…脑袋掉了没

有？脑袋不见了-114

把他们的头砍下来…他们的头都

砍掉了么？他们的头都没了！-87

Flamingoes and mustard both bite-90 红鹭鹚和芥末一样，都会咬疼

人。-75

火烈鸟和芥末豆是火辣辣的-127 火烈鸟和芥末两者都会咬人的

-96

Mustard mine...the more there is of mine the less

there is of yours-91

芥末矿——所旷愈多，所学越少

-76

芥末机器…我得的多你，你得的

就少了-128

芥末矿…我的东西越多,你的东西

越少+footnotes-98

Either you or your head must be off...-92 不是你去，就是你的头得去-77 不是你滚开，就是你的脑袋搬家

-130

要么是你，要么是你的头离开！

-99

Tortoise...he taught us- 95 老甲鱼-老忘-忘记教我们功课-80 老海龟-玳瑁-他教我们叫他玳瑁

-134

老海龟 - 陆龟 - 他教我们校规

+footnotes-102-103

We went to school every day...I have been to a day

school too- 96

我们天天都有课的——我也曾

经天天上过学堂-81

我们每天上学—我也上全日制学

校-135

我们每天去上学——我也曾在

私立走读学校上学-103

Reeling and Writhing -96 "练浮"和"泻滞"-81 摇晃和扭动+footnotes-136 打转转和扭来扭去

61

+footnotes-105

Ambition, Distraction, Uglification and Derision-96 "夹术 ","钳术 ","沉术"和"丑术

"-81

野心，分心，丑化和嘲笑

+footnotes-136

雄心，消遣，丑化，嘲笑

+footnotes-105

Mystery, Seaography, Drawling, Stretching and

Fainting in Coil-97

"里湿","底里","涂化","尖鼻化","

水菜化"和"油化"-82

技艺,海洋学,拉长声调，伸展身

体，盘起来晕倒-137

神秘事，海学，拖话，伸展身体，

昏厥成圈圈+footnotes-106

Old crab-97 老螃蟹-82 老蟹-137 老螃蟹-106

Laughing and Grief-97 腊钉和稀腊-83 笑和悲哀-137 哈哈笑和伤心事+footnotes-106

Lessons.. lessen -97 功课有多少，先多后少-83 所以叫课，因为一天比一天扣叫功课，因为一天比一天克扣下

去+footnotes-107

At dinn-…where dinn may be..101 在大海碗——不知道大海湾是

什么地方-87

饭桌——不知道"饭"是什么地方

-145

在饭——不知道饭可能在哪儿

-111

Whiting...it does the boots and the shoes...are done

with whiting 102

黄蟹…刷鞋…黄蟹油-88 小鳕鱼…擦靴子、鞋子!...用小鳕

鱼擦的-147

牙鳕…擦长筒靴和皮鞋…用牙鳕

擦的+footnotes-112

Soles and eels-102 蟹黄和蟹油-88 鳎鱼和线虫+footnotes-147 鲳鱼和鳗鱼+footnotes-113

Porpoise... purpose-102 鲤鱼…理由-88 海豚…目的+footnotes-147 海豚…目的+footnotes-113

I hadn't begun my tea-twinkling of the tea-...it

began with the tea...of course twinkling begins with

a T...-111

我不过刚起头喝我的茶…而且那

茶又要查夜——查夜先从茶起

头…自然查夜是茶字起头…-97

我刚要喝茶...茶又在闪烁…茶打

头的闪烁…闪烁当然是 T字打头！

+footnotes-162

那天我还没有开始用茶…那个闪

烁的茶…那是从茶开始的…闪烁

当然是从一个 T 开始的

啦!+footnotes-125

I am a poor man…poor speaker-112 我是个穷人…你的话说的真穷

-98

我是个可怜人…你是个可怜的发

言人-163

我是一个可怜的人…你是一个可

怜的笨口拙舌的人-126

Before she had this fit... you never had fits...then the

words don't fit you-120-121

她还没有发疯前…你从来没有发

疯的 … 那么这句话不关风

-106-107

在她发病之前…你从来没有发过

病吧？ … 这句同你对不上号

+footnotes-176-177

她这次大发雷霆之前…你从来没

有大发雷霆吧？…那么这些话不

适合你啦+footnotes-137

62

Appendix IV Parody Translation Form

There are 10 parodies in the original book, because of space limit, only three most famous ones are listed here.

Original verse Translation

Zhao (1922) Wang (2000) Wu (2010)

How doth the little crocodile (Carroll)

How doth the little crocodile

Improve his shining tail,

And pour the waters of the Nile

On every golden scale!

How cheerfully he seems to grin,

How neatly spreads his claws,

And welcomes little fishes in,

With gently smiling jaws!

小鳄鱼，

尼罗河上晒尾巴。

片片金光鳞，

洒点清水罢。

笑糜糜，

爪子摆得开又开。

一口温和气，

欢迎小鱼儿来。

小小的鳄鱼

在拾掇他闪亮的尾巴，

把滔滔的尼罗河水

冲洗每一片黄金的鳞甲！

他咧着嘴笑的多么开心，

他的脚爪张的多么潇洒，

他的牙床带着文雅的微笑，

向小鱼们表示欢迎！

那条小小的鳄鱼怎么样

使它发亮的尾巴更发亮，

还把尼罗河的水浇身上，

洗得每块鳞片都金光闪！

喜滋滋的样子看来多动人，

张牙舞爪的动作多轻灵，

那两腭一开大口笑迎宾，

小小的鱼儿请进，都请进！

You are old, Father William (Carroll)

"You are old, father William," the

young man said,

"And your hair has become very white;

And yet you incessantly stand on your

head--

Do you think, at your age, it is right?"

"威廉师傅你这么老，

你的头发白又白；

倒竖蜻蜓，你这么巧——

你想这样儿该不该？

你老啦，威廉老爹，

年轻人说

你的头发已经很白

可你仍旧老是拿大顶，

你觉得你这种年纪是否应该？

那个青年说，你老了，威廉爸爸;

很白很白呀，你的头发

可是你一刻不停地竖蜻蜓，好起劲——

你这把年纪，这么玩儿行不行？

63

"In my youth," father William replied to

his son,

"I feared it might injure the brain;

But now that I'm perfectly sure I have

none,

Why, I do it again and again."

"You are old," said the youth, "as I

mentioned before,

And have grown most uncommonly fat;

Yet you turned a back-somersault in at

the door--

Pray what is the reason of that?"

"In my youth," said the sage, as he

shook his grey locks,

"I kept all my limbs very supple

By the use of this ointment--one shilling

the box--

Allow me to sell you a couple?"

"You are old," said the youth, "and your

jaws are too weak

For anything tougher than suet;

Yet you finished the goose, with the

bones and the beak--

先生答到,"我那时小，

怕把脑子跌去来；

现在脑子我没多少，

天天练武随便摔."

威廉师傅你这么重，

浑身长得肥又肥；

倒迁筋斗进门洞——

你这身子可危不危?

老头答道，“当年轻，

我就用这个油拌灰，

卖给你只算一先令，

搽了就四肢轻如飞，

威廉师傅你这么弱，

只该喝点汤光汤，

吃鸡带骨头还叫饿，

这样你胃口伤不伤？

我年轻时，

威廉老爹回答他的儿子

我曾担心会损伤脑筋

可我现在完全确信我根本没有脑子

于是我就一次又一次地玩起拿大顶。

我刚才说过，年轻人说，你老啦

并且胖得让人吃惊，

可是你一进门就来了一个后空翻，

请问那是什么原因？

我年轻时，

长者晃晃他的灰白发卷说，

我的四肢保持得非常灵活，

全靠搽这种油膏，一先令一盒。

你要不要买两盒？


你的牙口不好，

照说除了肥肉什么都吃不了，

可是你啃掉了那只鹅，连骨头都不剩，

请问你怎么能做到？

威廉爸爸回答他的儿子说：

年轻时，只怕脑子会伤着，

可现在我完全肯定自己没脑子，

所以我一玩再玩也没事。

那个青年说，我刚才说过，你老了，

而且胖的天下都难找；

可是在门口，你一个后滚翻，进了屋里—

—

请说说，这么做竟是何道理？

这胖胖长者摇摇他雪白的头发，

说道，年轻时，我的四肢柔又滑，

就因为用了这油膏——一盒售一先令——

可允许我来卖给你两盒？

那个青年说，你老了，牙齿不顶用，

比板油硬点的，你就嚼不动，

然而你却把鹅连骨带喙都吃光——

请说说你究竟如何往肚里装?

64

Pray, how did you manage to do it?"

"In my youth," said his father, "I took to

the law,

And argued each case with my wife;

And the muscular strength, which it

gave to my jaw,

Has lasted the rest of my life."

"You are old," said the youth, "one

would hardly suppose

That your eye was as steady as ever;

Yet you balanced an eel on the end of

your nose--

What made you so awfully clever?"

"I have answered three questions, and

that is enough,"

Said the father. "Don't give yourself

airs!

Do you think I can listen all day to such

stuff?

Be off, or I'll kick you down stairs!"

威廉答道,"我做知县,

太太总要来帮我忙,

件件案子要扭着我辩,

所以练得我嘴这么强."

威廉师傅你这么晃，

你的眼睛花不花？

鳝鱼顶在鼻尖儿上，

这样能耐差不差？

师傅怒道：你还不够？

问了又问干甚么？

谁爱听你这咕叨咒？

滚下楼去你快回家！

我年轻时，父亲说，

对法律有了兴趣，

事无大小都要同我妻子争论，

我练就了有力的脸部肌肉，

一辈子受用不尽。


谁都没有料到，

你的眼里仍像以前那么可靠，

能把一条鳗鱼顶在鼻尖上不掉。

你怎么会这么灵巧？

我回答了三个问题，已经够多的了

他的父亲说，

别再我面前摆谱！

难道你以为我有时间听你胡扯。

你给我走开，

不然我一脚把你踢下楼去！

爸爸说：年轻时，我学的是法律，

老婆跟我辩论每一件案例，

因此体力强，肌肉健，下颚坚，

这叫我享用一直到晚年.

那个青年说，你老了，难以设想

你的目光会像从前一样强；

然而你把鳗鱼用鼻尖直着顶——

什么使你如此情人地机灵？

爸爸说，我已经回答了三个问题，

你不要盛气凌人个没底！

你以为我能够整天听你这样胡诌？

去吧，否则我要把你踢下楼！

Twinkle, twinkle, little bat (Carroll)

Twinkle, twinkle, little bat!

汀格尔，汀格尔，小蝙蝠！

闪烁，闪烁，小蝙蝠！

闪烁，闪烁，小小的蝙蝠，

65

How I wonder what you're at!

Up above the world you fly,

Like a tea-tray in the sky.

Twinkle, twinle------

好好儿说来你何所欲！

飞在天上那么高，

像个茶盘飘呀飘。

汀格尔，汀格尔——

我多么想知道你要干什么！

你高高地飞在世界上空，

像是天上的茶盘。

闪烁，闪烁。。。。。。

我不知道，你忙些什么！

在世界之上你飞呀飞，

像天空你一只茶盘打来回。

闪烁，闪烁——

Documents

On study of how the time of translation of a book affects English--shaotong chen--13258825