The Choice of Tense in Translation into the Second Language

Chen, Meng-Lin; Dong, Dahui

doi:10.22158/selt.v4n2p187

Cited by 1 publication

(5 citation statements)

References 23 publications

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“…In the present study, the English translation was collected from graduate students whose second language was English. Compared with previous studies that contrasted the use of tense and aspect between native English translators and non-native English translators (Dong, 2014; Chen & Dong, 2016), the present study only examined English translation from English as a second language users, but the comparison was made between students with advanced (C1) level of English proficiency and those with upper intermediate (B2) level of English. In other words, both groups in the present study were using an interlanguage.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Chen and Dong (2016) investigated the use of tense among professional Chinese-English editors in translating Chinese press editorials into English. The translators were separated into native English-speaking professional translators, native Chinese-speaking professional translators, and native Chinese-speaking novice translators.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…While previous studies compared the frequencies of tense and aspect usages across languages and their translations (e.g., Chen & Dong, 2016), they did not look into the consistencies of the tense and aspect between the source and the target texts. For example, it was unclear whether the native English-speaking translators rendered the translation with more simple past tense because the source text in Chinese was written with more simple past tense or because the translators interpreted the source text as in the past (but the source was not written in the past tense).…”

Section: Research Questionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In addition, each of the previous studies on Chinese-English translation was collected from students of a certain English proficiency level, such as preliminary or lower level (Hong, 2008;L.-H. Tsai, 2020;Wang & Wu, 2009), upperintermediate, or even higher levels (Chen & Dong, 2016;Dong, 2014;Dong & Lan, 2008;Li & Zhao, 2021;Newbery-Payton & Mochizuki, 2020;P.-S. Tsai, 2016P.-S. Tsai, , 2021. Few studies have looked into the translation produced by students of different English proficiency levels at the same time (except Chen & Dong, 2016).…”

Section: Research Questionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Tense, as trivial as it may appear, carries important messages that may distort the original meaning of the source text if it is not properly rendered into the target language (P.-S. Tsai, 2021). As presented in previous research that compared English translations of Chinese texts between native and nonnative English-speaking professionals (Chen & Dong, 2016), the reason that makes the rendition unnatural to the readers of English came from the inconsistencies in the tense and aspect. Furthermore, interviews with Chinese students with an advanced English proficiency level equivalent to C1 in the standard of the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR; above 6.5 in IELTS; EF Education First, 2022) also showed that students considered the differences in the tense marking systems between Chinese and English challenging for them during translation (Li & Zhao, 2021).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 97%

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An Error Analysis on Tense and Aspect Shifts in Students’ Chinese-English Translation

Tsai

2023

SAGE Open

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Translation of scientific texts has been regarded as having the least freedom and variety in rendition; however, inconsistencies occur when translators work with two language systems that differ in reference to time, such as between Chinese and English. Tense is one of the core components of English grammar, but such information is not apparent in Chinese because the Chinese language tends to express time with lexical items in context instead of adding morphological changes to the verbs. The present study collected Chinese-English translated texts from graduate students on topics in the popular science domain. Analyses were conducted by comparing the tense information in the source text and the tense rendered in the target text on a sentence-by-sentence basis. The results showed that while the source text in Chinese stayed in the present tense, the students tended to switch from the present tense to the future or past tense during translation. In particular, the Chinese word “hui” has a habitual meaning that usually describes facts instead of presenting a future tense in scientific texts, but the students tended to interpret it as a future tense word, thus producing inappropriate tense shifts during translation. The pedagogical implication of such findings on inconsistent tenses between the source and target texts suggests that in the teaching of translation, analysis of the tense structure of the Chinese text and the consistency of tense information rendered in English should be emphasized.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Research Questionsmentioning

confidence: 99%