Title: From Demons to Buddhas, A Religious Conversion: A Corpus Stylistic Analysis of the Personalization of the Great Sage
Time: May 9, 2019 (Thursday) 1:30 p.m.-3:00 p.m.
Venue: Room 500, Foreign Language Building
Speaker: Wang Feng, Associate Professor
Sponsor: School of Foreign Languages
Abstract:
In the course of the one hundred years in which The Journey to the West, a novel long considered one of four great Chinese classics, has been translated into English by various translators, this novel has be treated to many translation strategies including religion blending of Buddhism and Christianity, demotic wording of de-religiousization and adding annotations and introductions. These changes of translation \reflect the gradual realization by the translators of the importance of the novel’s religious implications.
In order to explore the implied theme of religious conversion, this study, taking the translation of The Journey to the West by Professor Anthony Yu of University of Chicago as the research object, expounds the personification of the protagonist "The Great Sage” from the perspective of corpus stylistics. On the one hand, this study uses corpus tools PowerConc and LancsBox to show the collocation network of the Great Sage and describes how characters change as the story unfolds and how they interact with the fictional world. On the other hand, Systemic-Functional Linguistics and other theories are used to explain the Great Sage's spiritual process of breaking away from his demon nature and finally becoming a Buddha.
Wang Feng is an associate professor at the JLU School of Foreign Languages. He holds dual Ph.D. degrees from Tongji University and Free University of Brussels. His research interests include theology of corporal translation, theology of the arts. His works have been published by Perspectives, Target, Style, Studia Neophilologica, Australian Journal of Linguistics, Chinese Semiotic Studies, Foreign Language Teaching, Foreign Language Research, Foreign Language Teaching Theory and Practice, Foreign Language Electrical Teaching, Journal of Xi 'an International Studies University, Foreign Languages and Literature and Shanghai Translation.
