Publications

Publication details [#41831]

Wang, Lin. 2017. 失色的非个人化叙事:小说中的不定代词one之汉译研究 [The Lost and Impersonal Narrative: a study on the Chinese translation of the indefinite pronoun "one" in novels]. Foreign Languages Research (外语研究) 34 (4) : 76–82.
Publication type
Article in jnl/bk
Publication language
Chinese
Target language

Abstract

The referential meaning of the indefinite pronoun "one" is ambiguous, and its clever use in novels can add up the impersonal colour of the narrative, which helps to raise the character's experience or viewpoint into a collective or even common experience or universal truth. An investigation into the Chinese translation of the indefinite pronoun "one" in novels found that translating "one" into "he/she", "me", "we", "person" or "people" would narrow or distort its vague referential meaning and dilute its impersonal narrative. According to the research, the dual meaning pronoun "you" in Chinese can refer to the speaker itself and to anyone's referential meanings, so its referential meaning is rather equivalent to the meaning of "one". Therefore, the unified translation of "one" as "you" can relatively reproduce the vague meaning of the word and its impersonal narrative.
Source : Based on abstract in journal