Introduction

Abstract

The objective of this book is to describe systematically the linguistic characteristics of texts translated into Chinese in relation to native writings in the same language with an ultimate interest in the so-called translation universals, which were first defined by Baker (1993: 43) as the “universal features of translation, that is features which typically occur in translated text rather than original utterances and which are not the result of interference from specific linguistic systems”. This definition can be less strongly formulated as the general tendencies, regularities or typical linguistic features which are found in translational language either in terms of their differentiating features from the source language (SL) or in terms of their deviations from the target language (TL) which is usually thought to be the native tongue of the translator. On the one hand the interference effect of the SL upon the translation is admittedly inevitable; the language of the translated texts, on the other hand, seems to be different to the TL as well (McEnery and Xiao 2007a). The second type of differences can be detected by contrastive studies between the translated texts and the comparable non-translated, native writings in the same language. The research into this has already shown some potential powers to the investigation of the translating process; to the studies of the translational norms, i.e. the socialcultural norms sanctioning translating activities; as well as to the illuminating idea of the “Third Code” proposed by Frawley in 1984.