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Article published In:
Babel
Vol. 64:2 (2018) ► pp.225–249

Decoding and encoding the discourse meaning of punctuation

A perspective from English-to-Chinese translation

| University of Westminster

This exploratory research examines translation students’ use of punctuation, by applying Newmark’s (1988) classical idea of punctuation as a discourse unit for meaning demarcation. Data were collected from a group of 25 Chinese students studying specialised translation at a British university. The research focuses on the use of two punctuation marks in English: comma and period or full stop. The aim is to investigate how students of translation analyse the meaning of a source text with punctuation marks and how they subsequently convert this meaning into the target language again using punctuation marks. It is found that students generally do not automatically copy the punctuation marks of the source text into the translation. They will customize or modify the original punctuation marks according to their meaning analysis of the text and their knowledge of punctuation in source and target languages. Finally, we will discuss the implications of the research for translation education.

Keywords: punctuation, semantic relationship, discourse, translation pedagogy
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Translation procedures
  • 3.Comparing the English and the Chinese punctuation
    • 3.1Differences in form
    • 3.2Differences in function
  • 4.Methodology
  • 5.Data analysis and findings
    • 5.1Use of commas
    • 5.1.1Reduced or increased use of commas
    • 5.1.2Replacing with a pair of brackets
    • 5.1.3Replacing with a colon
    • 5.1.4Replacing with a semi-colon
    • 5.1.5Replacing with a dash
    • 5.1.6Replacing with a dunhao
    • 5.1.7Replacing with a full stop
    • 5.1.8Keeping the original commas
    • 5.2Use of full stops
      • 5.2.1Replacing with a comma, to form a new sentence by incorporating the subsequent source sentence
      • 5.2.2Replacing with words
      • 5.2.3Replacing with a semi-colon
      • 5.2.4Replacing with a dash
      • 5.2.5Direct transfer
    • 5.3Summary of research findings
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 10 September 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/babel.00032.wan
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