Use of Translation in Cross-linguistic Study of Language and Thinking
Wei-lun Lu (呂維倫)
Masaryk University
Brno, Czech Republic
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Language and Thought
•How humans use language to create understanding.
•Understand one thing in terms of another.
•吕老师的课程让我爱上 (love-up/on) 了中文。
•INCEPTION >> SPACE
•关上门 (close-up/on-door)、闭上嘴 (shut-up/on-mouth)
•Use up, eat up, shut up, etc.
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Meaning and understanding
•Various ways of understanding.
•
•Meaning of the picture resides in the way we understand it.
•
•Meaning of a situation resides in the way we verbalize it.
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Viewpoint and Construal
•Wei-lun went to Bratislava to give a talk.
•Wei-lun came to Bratislava to give a talk.
•
•How she [Alice] longed to get out of that dark hall!
•How she [Alice] longed to get out of this dark hall!
•
•Typical PoV markers:
–Deictic verbs, demonstratives...
–
•Different linguistic manifestations, different construals.
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What’s New?
•Cognitive Linguistics has taken advantage of various research methods.
–Intuition-based.
–Mono-lingual corpora.
–Experimental (fMRI, EEG, eye-tracking).
•
•No systematic use of parallel texts or translation corpora yet.
–Rojo and Ibarretxe-Antuñano 2013; Muskat-Tabakowska 2014; Slobin 1996, 2003; Tabakowska 1993; Wu
2004.
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What Are Parallel Texts?
•Parallel texts as a collection of texts put alongside with their translations.
•
•Benefit: Verbalization of highly similar (if not identical) usage events.
•
•Use of world masterpieces.
–Translations in various languages
–More than one version in a given language
–Inter- and intra-language variation
•
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Methodological Concern
•What can translated texts reveal that other methods cannot?
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COME in Chinese:
qian-bian
huang-he
pai
zaizhong-kache
de
jiashi-yuan
cong
front-side
yellow-river
brand
big-rig-truck
DE
drive-man
from








jiashi-shi
li
tiao-xia-lai,
zhan
zai
lu-bian,
drive-room
in
jump-down-come
stand
LOC
road-side








naonu
de
kan-zhe
ta…




angry
DE
look-IMP
her












前边黄河牌载重卡车的驾驶员从驾驶室里跳下来，站在路边恼怒的看著她…
(Lit.) “The driver of the Yellow River big-rig in front of them came down by means of jumping and
stared daggers at her from the roadside.”
(Published Translation) “The driver of the Yellow River big-rig in front of them jumped out of his
cab and stared daggers at her from the roadside.”
Lai
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Lai ‘Come’ vs. Qu ‘Go’
qian-bian
huang-he
pai
zaizhong-kache
de
jiashi-yuan
cong
front-side
yellow-river
brand
big-rig-truck
DE
drive-man
from








jiashi-shi
li
tiao-xia-qu,
zhan
zai
lu-bian,
drive-room
in
jump-down-go
stand
LOC
road-side








naonu
de
kan-zhe
ta…




angry
DE
look-IMP
her












前边黄河牌载重卡车的驾驶员从驾驶室里跳下去，站在路边恼怒的看著她…
(Lit.) “The driver of the Yellow River big-rig in front of them went down by means of jumping from
his cab and stared daggers at her from the roadside.” (constructed)
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Specific Research Questions
•How is a Chinese passage with a typical deixis, such as lai ‘come’, translated into English?
•
•Is there any stylistic difference between the original and the translation, in terms of PoV
management?
•
•What kind of cognitive coordination does this deixis and its translated counterpart involve?
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Material Choice
•酒國/The Republic of Wine (Mo Yan).
•
•Translation by Howard Goldblatt.
•
•Only Chapter 1.
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Frequency of COME in Chinese
•82 tokens of lai ‘come’ identified in the Chinese original:
–40 tokens in deictic expressions
–
–42 tokens of lai in idiomatic expressions
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Comments Lily: What is not clear to me though is the methodology, Louis. Are you counting all
tokens with LAI, regardless of whether they are 1) resultative verb compounds or 2) compounds with
V-DIR-DEI (compounds composed of 3 characters) constructions only, as indicated in one of your
slides? How about V-DEI (e.g. chu-lai) compounds then? Is qi-lai treated as an idiomatic
expression, and is lAI a deictic here?
Response Louis: Yes, I realized I should have made this clear somewhere in the PPT, so I added
something to this slide. As long as lai can be replaced with qu and still makes good sense, that
occurrence counts in the first category. Qi-lai is obviously not in this category, but chu-lai is a
different story, where pao-chu-lai ‘run-out-come’ and pao-chu-qu ‘run-out-go’ both make sense,
while only wen-chu-lai ‘(lit) smell-out-come, find out by smelling’ makes sense but wen-chu-qu
doesn’t. Therefore whether the occurrence is V-DIR-DEI or just V-DEI is not a criterion for my
classification for the present purpose of PoV management, although they do exhibit a somehow skewed
distribution (26/30:4/30), but that I believe is another story.
A look into the above mentioned semi-deictic usages will also be an interesting way to go, which
was already in the slide on Further Issues (p.25).
Have I answered your question?

Frequency of COME in English?
•COME in the English translation (incl. come(s), came, coming):
•
•   16 (!) tokens identified
–
–10 tokens in deictic expressions
–
–6 in idiomatic expressions (came up with the idea, he must come down to earth, etc.)
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Distribution of Lai
•In Chinese, lai occurs predominantly as a resultative suffix in resultative constructions (cx).
•
•They account for 75% (30/40) in the deictic category.
•
•Constructional profile: lai as a viewpoint operator is attracted much more (3x more often) to the
resultative cx than as a main verb.
•
•The distribution and frequency of translation equivalents in both lg in the same usage event.
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Resultative Constructions in Chinese
•Cx Schema: V(-DIRectional)(-DEIctic)
•V-DIR-DEI:
15
qian-bian
huang-he
pai
zaizhong-kache
de
jiashi-yuan
cong
front-side
yellow-river
brand
big-rig-truck
DE
drive-man
from








jiashi-shi
li
tiao-xia-lai…
drive-room
in
jump-down-come








(Lit.) “The driver of the Yellow River big-rig in front of them came down from his cab by means of
jumping…”
(PT) “The driver of the Yellow River big-rig in front of them jumped out of his cab...”
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Comment Arie:
I looked up the passage, and it is clear that lai is functional here: the viewpoint is with
inspector Ding Gou’er and the (lady) driver if the truck they are in together. The next sentence is
about Ding Gou’er’s feelings, so we-readers share HIS viewpoint: “Ding Gou’er could feel the anger
radiating from the man’s eyes through the gleaming surface of his mirror-lens  sunglasses.” So the
Chinese text about the tax-driver contains an explicit marker that the viewpoint is Ding Gou’er’s!
The English translation lacks this. This MIGHT perhaps have been expressed in English by “The
driver … came jumping out of his cab”, or “jumped out and came towards them”, but the first is
definitely not idiomatic (if it is grammatical ), and the second makes the text seriously less
powerful (slows the pace of the story down), and (more importantly) it still does not express that
the jumping is OBSERVED by Ding Gou’er, that this event is presented from INSIDE his viewpoint
space (as Dancygier might say it). The viewpoint marking is thus sacrificed in the translation to
the fact that English preferably marks the MANNER-of-Movement, not the path, in the main verb (cf.
Talmy, Slobin).
I think one would be correct in claiming/objecting that the viewpoint configuration can well/easily
be inferred pragmatically, so the translation need not necessarily be characterized as ‘wrong’  -
but it still amounts to a significant difference in STYLE of the texts in the two languages, and
the more so, if the difference is statistically more pronounced (as it is here!).
Response Louis: Arie, your suggestion of saying more on the PoV managing function of lai, and what
it does to style, is a good idea. I’ve added a slide on this (p.15-16).
But I have one question re your foregoing comment. I had thought the viewpoint marking is
sacrificed in the translation, not to the fact that English preferably marks the manner in the
verb, but to the fact that English does not express the deictic center in the satellite, which
Chinese does quite a lot. What do you think?
Re-response () Arie: Partly, there may only be a terminological point here. What exactly is the
grammatical analyis of lai and its relation to the verb? I infer from your use of “satellite” that
you consider it a particle, as the directional particles (=satellites) in English “jump
down/up/forward/…”). Is that correct? In that case, you are entirely right. For some reason I had
assumed that lai can be used independently, i.e. as the main verb of a clause by itself (how do you
say “He came with me” in Chinese?). If it can, then the present case might also be seen as a series
of verbs (perhaps a serial verb construction?); English “He came out of the car, jumping” would
then be a close equivalent, but not idiomatic – and the reason I gave for that is precisely that
English is not a verb-framed, but a satellite-framed language, in Talmy’s terminology.
Louis: I think there’s something interesting behind the comments from both of you on this issue.
For our case of deictic construction (let me just loosely call it a construction for our
uncertainty), English incorporates it into the verb, and Chinese can use it either as a main verb
that HAS TO STAND ALONE (lai and qu cannot be followed by a directional particle, in contrast to
other motion verbs), or as a resultative suffix. And I think before we comfortably accept Talmy’s
typology, we should figure out: Should the deictic center/PoV be considered a MANNER of motion? Or
a part of the PATH of motion (either as source or goal)?
I totally agree that this is something extremely interesting to do, and we may have exciting things
to say about the typology. But I kind of doubt whether this could fit into the current
presentation. Perhaps a discussion of deictic verbs and verb-/satellite-framed lgs can be the basis
of our next conf abstract?
Let me know what you think.

Instance of V-DEI
16
wo
shi
shi
li
pai-lai
de
xin
I
am
city
in
send-come
DE
new







kuang-zhang





mine-head












我是市里派来的新矿长。
(Lit.) “I am the new Mine Director, from the city (they) sent (me) and (I) came.”
(PT) “I’m the new Mine Director, sent here by municipal authorities.”
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Use of Come as a Dispreferred Option
qian-bian
huang-he
pai
zaizhong-kache
De
jiashi-yuan
cong
front-side
yellow-river
brand
big-rig-truck
DE
drive-man
from








jiashi-shi
li
tiao-xia-lai,
zhan
zai
lu-bian,
drive-room
in
jump-down-come
stand
LOC
road-side








naonu
de
kan-zhe
ta,
(zui
li
dunang-zhe
angry
DE
look-IMP
her
mouth
in
murmur-IMP








“an
ni-ma
ge
qiu!”)




press
you-mother
CL
ball












(Lit.) “The driver of the Yellow River big-rig in front of them came down by means of jumping and
stared daggers at her from the roadside, (murmuring “Stop pressing the fucking horn!”)”
(PT) “The driver of the Yellow River big-rig in front of them jumped out of his cab and stared
daggers at her from the roadside.”
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NEW SLIDE!
Comment Arie: Aha! I did not know, of course, that the clause following the jumping-sentence was
like this. This does indeed make the English sentence at this position all the more interesting! In
a sense, it shows the skill of the translator: He cannot mark viewpoint with the deictic element,
the conventions of English grammar being what they are, but he finds another way, natural in
English, which does give the reader of the English text a clue about the viewpoint, viz. the verb
feel (with a non-finite complement). But there is still a difference, as you mention in the next
slide. See also my comments there.

Translator’s improvisation
•An inserted passage: Ding Gou’er could feel the anger radiating from the man’s eyes through the
gleaming surface of his mirror-lens sunglasses.
•
•Use of cog verb as an “approximation” of the viewpointing effect.
•
•A difference in style and in construal remains.
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NEW SLIDE!
Comment Arie: I propose to avoid the term “implicit”, ans simply say ”in another manner”. Reason:
in a specific sense, the Chinese text is MORE implitic! Consider: there is, indeed, an explicit
deictic marker, but the reader has to INFER, from the context, what the identity of the ‘origo’, of
the anchor of the viewpoint, is (viz. Din Gou’er). The English translation has “Ding Gou’er could
feel” and this thus explicitly identifies whose viewpoint we are taking; moreover, feel as such is
an explicit verb of cognition/emotion. Precisely these linguistic differences form the basis for
the stylistic difference that you mention (with the deictic, Ding Gou’er is off-stage, thus
construed more subjectively, in Langacker’s terms!).
Louis response: Totally agree! Done!
However I hesitate to include what you’ve mentioned re subjectivity, given the nature of the
audience… Please advise, both.

The Importance of Being…
•Disproportion accounted for by occurrences of a PoV marker in particular cxs.
•
•Influence of grammar on stylistics.
•
•And on constructional means to coordinate readers’ cognitive states.
•
•Grammar: Speaker’s tendency to associate certain words with given constructions.
Constructionist
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PoV Markers That Get Across?
•Deictic COME: 10 (Eng), 40 (Chi)
•
•It seems that only 10 tokens of deictic COME have “survived” the translation.
•
•Only 5 tokens, out of 10, pair up with lai in the original.
•
•The rest, 50%(!), is the translator’s own invention.
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Radical Invention: Opposite PoV
qing
ni-men
yansu-dian!
xianren
jiu-guo
shi
wei
please
you-PL
serious-DIM
current
wine-country
city
committee








xuanchuan
bu
fu-bu-zhang
Jin Gangzuan
shi
ci
promote
deputy
vice-deputy-head
Jin Gangzuan
BE
this








an
de
zhongyao
xianyiren,
ta
shi
cong
gui
case
DE
important
suspect
he
BE
from
you-HON








kuang
chu-qu
de.





mine
out-go
DE













请你们严肃点！现任酒国市委宣传部副部长金刚钻是此案的重要嫌疑人，他是从贵矿出去的。
(PT) “I must ask you to take this seriously. Liquorland’s Deputy Head of Propaganda, Diamond Jin,
who is a prime suspect, comes from your esteemed mine.”
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Comment Arie:
Are you sure that the PoV in the translation is CONTRADICTORY to the original? You gloss “shi” as
“BE”, where the translation has “come”. This suggests to me that we should say that Chinese lacks
an indication of PoV, while the English translation explicitly marks the situation as embedded in
the present (here-and-now) viewpoint.The balance between what is conventionally coded and what is
pragmatically inferred would then be exactly the reverse of what I remarked on slide 13.
Response Louis: My bad! I should have highlighted the deictic marker (qu ‘go’) in the example! I
hope the passage now makes sense to you.
Re-response Arie: It does! But do you have any idea what could motivate the English translation?
Pure idiomaticity? (i.e. that the expression “comes from” is the coventional colloquial way of
saying “originates from”). Or something deeper?
Louis: I think the degree of entrenchment of constructions and association between constructions
are probably two important factors. I very quickly looked up come from and go from in the BNC, and
it turns out that the former only has 1389 hits but the latter 11612 (almost 10x as much). Also the
cx of go from is very often, at least roughly half of what I’ve gone through, used in a larger cx
of go from A to B. So I think it is both the much higher frequency (i.e. higher degree of
entrenchment) of come from and the close association between go from and go from A to B that
dissuades the translator from choosing a cx that would have expressed the same PoV.
Make sense?
If so, we need to add another couple of slides. Let me know.

From Concept to Meaning and Form
•In the Chinese original, only the SOURCE (cong ‘from’) and PATH (chu-qu ‘out-go’) of the motion
are linguistically elaborated.
•
•Direction: away from the speaker
•
•Go (out) from would make THE ideal translation.
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Cx Profile in the Way
•Constructional profile: 70% (14/20) in go from involves a very specific pattern of go from X to Y
(cf. come from: 0%)
•
•Go from X is attracted much more towards a construction with a GOAL specified than without.
•
•As a result go from X does not sound natural enough in that context (where the GOAL is not
specified in the ST).
•
•The entrenchment of the full pattern go from X to Y makes the reduced go from X a bad choice
(though not impossible).
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Summary
•Differences and mismatches abound in the translated texts.
•
•Each lg has its own unique way of utilizing deictic elements as a PoV operator in narratives.
•
•Thus its distinct pattern of cognitive coordination and literary stylistics.
•
•Should be seen as the translator’s spontaneous response to the differences between the two
systems.
•
•Makes sense only when we view grammar as a system of cog routines with varying degrees of
entrenchment.
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What Translated Texts Have Revealed
•Difference in frequency and distribution of translation equivalents in the same usage event.
•
•Translator’s improvisation and a consequent difference in construal.
•
•The fact that the same usage event needs to be presented from opposite viewpoints in different
languages.
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Comment Lily: Grammar plays a role, definitely. I however do not think it is the only deciding
factor for the issue you raise or try to solve. What role does a translator play in terms of the
stylistics (or poetics) of a written piece, esp a literary piece? Is it not true that linguistic
choices (eg, when it come to the management of PoV) are also in the hands of the translators?  Did
you not at all hint at the possibility during your discussion?
Response Louis: Ah, yes, this explains why the translator strategically uses a PoV marker opposite
to that in the original! I’ve added this valuable point here! It just occurred to me that here’s a
way of looking into that at a larger scale: Compare different translations of the same literary
text to see how PoV is managed across these translations. I’m pretty sure that different
translators will come up with their own strategies of shifting PoV, or will make their own decision
as to whether or not to shift (or show) PoV at all. We could possibly use Alice in Wonderland,
which Arie and I have looked at a bit, and its various translations, as the materials for this
possible direction of research. I’ve added this possibility to the slide of Further Issues (p.25).
Comment Arie: it would even be sensible to say that BECAUSE of the differences between grammars,
translator’s decisions HAVE to play an important role (see comments on the other passages) – they
are more closely interacting, as it were, than one being an “addition” to the other .
Louis: Ahha! You’re right. I’ve put the original passage in a new way, a better way to construe the
invention.

Take-home Messages
•Use of translations as a promising methodology in CLR.
•
•Translation as a window to the interaction of grammar, stylistics and thinking.
•
•The study of stylistics and translation cannot do without (constructional) grammar.
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Future Works
•Including more translations FROM modern Chinese:
•Qian Zhongshu
•Lu Xun
•Eileen Chang
•Lin Yutang
•Bai Xianyong
•
•Translations of world masterpieces INTO modern Chinese
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Cognitive Linguistics in FF MU
•Teachers:
–Nadia Kudrnacova (EN)
–Wei-lun Lu (CH)
–Jiri Matela (JP)
•Doctoral students:
–Jan Hartman (EN)
–Magdalena Knotkova (EN)
–Ivana Kralikova (EN)
•
•Cog Ling in Brno (CLiB)
•Keynote: Zoltan K (2015), Laura Janda (2016)
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•
•THANK YOU!
•weilunlu@gmail.com
•
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