Cover not available
Article published In:
Target
Vol. 29:1 (2017) ► pp.64–86

Recreating the image of Chan master Huineng

The role of personal pronouns

| Macquarie University |
| Macquarie University |
The article is on the recreation of the image of Chan master Huineng in four English translations of the Platform Sutra through the choice of personal pronouns. Adopting SysConc as analytical tool, the study looks at the use of personal pronouns and the image of Huineng recreated in each translation. In Wong (1930a), the use of we in combination with you presents Huineng as both friendly and authoritative; in Heng (1977b), Huineng tends to avoid personal pronouns and seems to be detached; in Cleary (1998b), Huineng is more involved in the interaction and uses many I’s as well as you; in Cheng (2011), Huineng speaks in an elegant way and uses generic one as personal reference. It is argued that both the choices of personal pronouns and the images of Huineng recreated can be better understood in terms of the context of translation.
Keywords: personal pronouns, Huineng, systemic functional linguistics, interpersonal distance, context
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Personal pronouns: A systemic functional perspective
    • 2.1System of nominal person
    • 2.2Interpersonal distance and image of Huineng
  • 3.Methodology
    • 3.1Data
    • 3.2Analytical tools and procedures
  • 4.Analysis and findings
    • 4.1Personal pronouns in the four translations
    • 4.2Images of Huineng in four translations
      • 4.2.1An intimate spiritual mentor with authority
      • 4.2.2A detached Chan master
      • 4.2.3A friendly teacher
      • 4.2.4An elegant truth transmitter
    • 4.3Contextual considerations
      • 4.3.1Wong Mou-lam (1932): The first translator and his Western readers
      • 4.3.2Heng Yin (1977): The first Western Buddhist translator and early American Buddhists
      • 4.3.3Thomas Cleary (1998): A professional translator and the general public
      • 4.3.4 Cheng Kuan (2011): An abbot and his disciples
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Note
  • References


This article is currently available as a sample article.

Published online: 1 June 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/target.29.1.03yu
References (70)
References
Bader, Christopher Kennedy. 2010. “Fire and Brimstone (and Linguistics): The Sermon in Moby-Dick.” Available at SSRN 2039161. [URL]
Baker, Mona. 1996. “Corpus-Based Translation Studies: The Challenges That Lie Ahead.” In Terminology, LSP, and Translation: Studies in Language Engineering in Honor of Juan C. Sager, ed. by Harold L. Somers, 175–186. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Baumgarten, Nicole. 2008. “Writer Construction in English and German Popularized Academic Discourse: The Uses of We and Wir .” Multilingua 27 (4): 409–438. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Baumgarten, Nicole, and Demet Özçetin. 2008. “Linguistic Variation through Language Contact in Translation.” In Language Contact and Contact Languages, ed. by Peter Siemund and Noemi Kintana, 293–316. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Baur, Loni. 1998. “Loni Baur-Life as Service: From Buddhist Nun to Ukiah Attorney.” Sojourn Magazine. Accessed February 13, 2016. [URL]Google Scholar
Biber, Douglas, Stig Johansson, Geoffrey Leech, Susan Conrad, and Edward Finegan. 1999. Grammar of Spoken and Written English. Harlow: Longman.Google Scholar
Bielefeldt, Carl, and Lewis Lancaster. 1975. “T’an Ching (Platform Scripture).” Philosophy East and West 25 (2): 197–212. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Brown, Penelope, and Stephen C. Levinson. 1987. Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Brown, Roger, and Albert Gilman. 1960. “The Pronouns of Power and Solidarity.” In Style in Language, ed. by Thomas A. Sebeok, 253–276. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
. 1989. “Politeness Theory and Shakespeare’s Four Major Tragedies.” Language in Society 18 (2): 159–212. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Burton-Rose, Daniel. “The Lit Interview: Thomas Cleary an Oakland Author and Translator Ranges through the Many Worlds of Spiritual Life” [originally published in San Francisco Bay Guardian Literary Supplement ]. Accessed February 12, 2016. [URL]
Butt, David, Rhondda Fahey, Susan Feez, Sue Spinks, and Colin Yallop. 2006. Using Functional Grammar: An Explorer’s Guide. 2nd ed. Sydney: National Centre for English Language Teaching and Research, Macquarie University.Google Scholar
Chao, Fei-Pang. 2012. “Ding Fu-Bao and his Liu zu tan jing jian zhu” [The annotation of The Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch]. Buddhist Studies of National Taiwan University 231: 121–161.Google Scholar
Cheng, Kuan. 2011. The Dharmic Treasure Altar-Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch. Taipei: Vairocana Publishing Co.Google Scholar
Cleary, Thomas. 1998a. “Introduction.” In The Sutra of Hui-neng, Grand Master of Zen: with Hui-neng’s Commentary on the Diomand Sutra, ed. by Thomas Cleary, 3–4. Boston: Shambhala Publications.Google Scholar
. 1998b. The Sutra of Hui-neng, Grand Master of Zen: with Hui-neng’s Commentary on the Diomand Sutra. Boston: Shambhala Publications.Google Scholar
Cook, Guy. 2001. The Discourse of Advertising. London: Psychology Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Curren-Aquino, Deborah T. 1987. “Self-Naming in Shakespeare’s Early Plays.” Names 35 (3–4): 147–163. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dih, Ping Tsze. 1930. “Preface.” In Sutra Spoken by the Sixth Patriarch, Wei Lang, on the High Seat of the Gem of Law (Message from the East), tr. by Mou-Lam Wong, i. Shanghai: Yu Ching Press.Google Scholar
Fink, Charles K. 2012. “The ‘Scent’ of a Self: Buddhism and the First-person Perspective.” Asian Philosophy 22 (3): 289–306. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Haas, Mary R. 1969. “‘Exclusive’ and ‘Inclusive’: A Look at Early Usage.” International Journal of American Linguistics 35 (1): 1–6. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Halliday, M.A.K., and Christian M.I.M. Matthiessen. 2004. An Introduction to Functional Grammar. London: Arnold.Google Scholar
Halliday, M.A.K., and Edward McDonald. 2004. “Metafunctional Profile of the Grammar of Chinese.” In Language Typology: A Functional Perspective, ed. by Alice Caffarel, James Robert Martin, and Christian M.I.M. Matthiessen, 305–396. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hao, Yurong. 2015. “Explicitation of Personal Pronoun Subject in Chinese EFL Majors’ Translation: A Case Study of Translation Universals Based on PACCEL-W.” Journal of Language Teaching and Research 6 (3): 669–678. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hasan, Ruqaiya. 1996. “On Teaching Literature across Cultural Distances.” In The Language-Culture Connection, ed. by Joyce E. James, 34–63. Singapore: SEAMEO Regional Language Centre.Google Scholar
Heng, Ch’ih. 1977a. “Reviewer’s Preface.” In The Sixth Patriarch’s Dharma Jewel Platform Sutra, ed. by Heng Yin, xix–xx. San Francisco: Buddhist Text Translation Society.Google Scholar
Heng, Yin. 1977b. The Sixth Patriarch’s Dharma Jewel Platform Sutra. San Francisco: Buddhist Text Translation Society.Google Scholar
. 1977c. “Translator’s Introduction.” In The Sixth Patriarch’s Dharma Jewel Platform Sutra, tr. by Heng Yin, xvii–xviii. San Francisco: Buddhist Text Translation Society.Google Scholar
Herke-Couchman, Maria. 2006. SFL, Corpus and the Consumer: An Exploration of Theoretical and Technological Potential. PhD thesis Macquarie University.Google Scholar
Herke-Couchman, Maria, and Canzhong Wu. 2004. “Stylistic Features as Meaning Representation: Text as Phase Portrait.” Proceedings of AAAI Fall Symposium . Menlo Park, CA: AAAI Press. [URL]
House, Juliane. 2001. “How Do We Know When a Translation Is Good?” In Exploring Translation and Multilingual Text Production: Beyond Content, ed. by Erich Steiner and Colin Yallop, 127–160. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2004. “Explicitness in Discourse across Languages.” In Neue Perspektiven in der Übersetzungs- und Dolmetschwissenschaft, ed. by Juliane House, Werner Koller, and Klaus Schubert, 185–207. Bochum: AKS Verlag.Google Scholar
Hsuan, Hua. 1977. “Tripitaka Master Hua’s Introduction.” In The Sixth Patriarch’s Dharma Jewel Platform Sutra, tr. by Heng Yin, xv–xvi. San Francisco: Buddhist Text Translation Society.Google Scholar
Humphreys, Christmas. 1973. “Foreword to New Edition.” In The Sutra of Wei Lang (or Hui Neng), tr. by Christmas Humphreys and Mou-lam Wong, 5–7. New York: Hyperion Press.Google Scholar
Hyland, Ken. 2001. “Bringing in the Reader Addressee Features in Academic Articles.” Written Communication 18 (4): 549–574. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jorgensen, John. 2005. Inventing Hui-neng, the Sixth Patriarch: Hagiography and Biography in Early Ch’an. Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar
. 2012. “The Figure of Huineng.” In Readings of the Platform Sutra, ed. by Morten Schlutter and Stephen F. Teiser, 25–52. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Ko, Ping-Yip. 1996. “The History of The Sutra of Hui-Neng in English Translations.” The Dharmalakshana Buddhist Institute Buddhist Journal IV1: 1–19.Google Scholar
Lachs, Stuart. 2008. “The Zen Master in America: Dressing the Donkey with Bells and Scarves.” Accessed February 13, 2016. [URL]
Land, Victoria, and Celia Kitzinger. 2007. “Some Uses of Third-Person Reference Forms in Speaker Self-Reference.” Discourse Studies 9 (4): 493–525. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lefevere, André, and Susan Bassnett. 1990. “Introduction: Proust’s Grandmother and the Thousand and One Nights.” In Translation, History and Culture, ed. by Susan Bassnett and André Lefevere, 1–13. London: Pinter Publishers.Google Scholar
Levinson, Stephen C. 1983. Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Levý, Jiří. (1967) 2012. “Translation as a Decision Process.” Scientia Traductionis 111: 72–96.Google Scholar
Lin, Tony K., Kunchuang Tsai, and Josephine Lin. 2004. The Mandala Sutra and Its English Translation. Taipei: Jiafeng Press.Google Scholar
Low, Sang-Thoi. 2010. A Preliminary Study of Liuzu Tanjing: With a Focus on Cheng Kuan’s Version. Master thesis Graduate Institute of Translation and Interpretation, National Taiwan Normal University.Google Scholar
Lü, Shuxiang. 1999. Xiandai hanyu babai ci [Eight hundred characters in modern Chinese]. Beijing: The Commercial Press.Google Scholar
Marco, Josep. 2000. “Register Analysis in Literary Translation: A Functional Approach.” Babel 46 (1): 1–19. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Matthiessen, Christian M.I.M. 1995. Lexicogrammatical Cartography: English Systems. Tokyo: International Language Sciences Publishers.Google Scholar
Myers, Greg. 1994. Words in Ads. London: Edward Arnold.Google Scholar
Nanjio, Bunyiu. 1883. A Catalogue of the Chinese Translation of the Buddhist Tripitaka, the Sacred Canon of the Buddhists in China and Japan. London: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Pennycook, Alastair. 1994. “The Politics of Pronouns.” ELT Journal 48 (2): 173–178. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Poynton, Cate. 1991. Address and the Semiotics of Social Relations: A Systemic-Functional Account of Address Forms and Practices in Australian English. PhD thesis University of Sydney.Google Scholar
Quirk, Randolph, Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech, and Jan Svartvik. 1985. A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Sabater, Carmen Perez, Edmund Turney, Anna Montesinos Lopez, and Begona Montero Fleta. 2001. “Pronouns of Power and Manipulation.” Language for Special Purposes: Perspectives for the New Millennium 11: 489–497.Google Scholar
Schlütter, Morten. 2007. “Transmission and Enlightenment in Chan Buddhism Seen through the Platform Sutra (Liuzu tanjing 六祖壇經).” Chuang-Hwa Buddhist Journal: 379–410.Google Scholar
. 2012. “Introduction: The Platform Sutra, Buddhism, and Chinese Religion.” In Readings of the Platform Sutra, ed. by Huineng, Morten Schlutter, and Stephen F. Teiser, 1–18. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Smith, Karen. 2004. “‘I Am Me, but Who Are You and What Are We?’: The Translation of Personal Pronouns and Possessive Determiners in Advertising Texts.” Multilingua 23 (3): 283–303. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tong, Yuping. 2014. “Corpus-Based Study on Explicitation of Personal Pronouns in Chinese-English Translation.” Foreign Language Education 35 (104–107): 283–286.Google Scholar
Toury, Gideon. 2012. Descriptive Translation Studies and Beyond. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wales, Katie. 1980. “‘Personal’ and ‘Indefinite’ Reference: The Users of the Pronoun One in Present-Day English.” Nottingham Linguistic Circular 9 (2): 93–117.Google Scholar
. 1996. Personal Pronouns in Present-day English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Wang, Li. 2002. Wang Li Xuanji [Selected works of Wang Li]. Jilin: Northeast Normal University Press.Google Scholar
Welch, Holmes. 1968. The Buddhist Revival in China. London: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Wong, Mou-Lam. 1930a. Sutra Spoken by the Sixth Patriarch, Wei Lang, on the High Seat of the Gem of Law (Message from the East). Shanghai: Yu Ching Press.Google Scholar
. 1930b. “Translator’s Preface.” In Sutra Spoken by the Sxith Patriarch (Wei Lang) on the High Seat of the Gem of Law (Message from the East), tr. by Mou-Lam Wong, ii. Shanghai: Yu Ching Press.Google Scholar
Wu, Canzhong. 2000. Modelling Linguistic Resources: A Systemic Functional Approach. PhD thesis Macquarie University.Google Scholar
. 2009. “Corpus-Based Research.” In Continuum Companion to Systemic Functional Linguistics, ed. by M.A.K. Halliday and Jonathan J. Webster, 128–142. London: Continuum.Google Scholar
Wu, Canzhong, and Jing Fang. 2006. “The Social Semiotics of University Introductions in Australia and China.” Proceedings 33rd International Systemic Functional Congress, ed. by Leila Barbara and Tony Berber Sardinha, 568–591. São Paulo: PUCSP. [URL]Google Scholar
Zhao, Shikai. 1996. “The Contrastive Study of English and Chinese Personal Pronouns: A Preliminary Pragmatic Analysis.” In Yinghan yuyan wenhua duibi yanjiu lunwenji [Collected papers on the comparison between English and Chinese in language and culture], ed. by Ruihua Li, 185–199. Shanghai: Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press.Google Scholar
Zongbao, and Huineng. 1291. “Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch, 六祖大師法寶壇經.” Accessed February 13, 2016. [URL]
Cited by (7)

Cited by seven other publications

Chen, Xuemei
2024. Chinese Translations of Third-Person Pronouns for Talking and Non-talking Animals in Charlotte’s Web. Children's Literature in Education DOI logo
Wang, Xi & Jiashuai Li
2024. Recharacterising Confucius in Multimodal Translation: From Analects to Comics. Critical Arts ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Pan, Feng, Yi Fu & Tao Li
2023. Institutional translators’ mediation of CPC Work Reports diachronically through personal pronouns: a corpus-based discourse analysis approach. Perspectives ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Song, Qijun & Junfeng Zhang
2023. Ideological Mediation: Metaphor Shifts in Translating the Communist Party of China’s Centenary Speech. Critical Arts 37:6 ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Chen, Shukun, Winfred Wenhui Xuan & Hailing Yu
2022. Applying systemic functional linguistics in translation studies. Babel. Revue internationale de la traduction / International Journal of Translation 68:4 ► pp. 517 ff. DOI logo
Guo, Yijun
2021. Contrastive images of journalists and Chinese premiers in interpreter-mediated press conferences: a case study of Chinese ‘xiexie’. Perspectives 29:4 ► pp. 507 ff. DOI logo
Wang, Xi
2021. Construing Community with a Shared Future in President Xi Jinping’s Diplomatic Discourse (2013–2018): The Role of Personal Pronouns we and they. Critical Arts 35:3 ► pp. 35 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 27 september 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.