Montag, 1. September 2008

Zhuangzi (English Abstract)

Yi Qiao (Paderborn, Ferderal Republic of Germany)

A Project Report:

The Verbal Expressions of Emotions in the Works of Zhuangzi - An Interlinguistic Study to their German and English Translations (An Abstract )

The works of Zhuangzi written by the Chinese philosopher Master Zhuang Zhou (365 -290 BCE) contribute a great deal to the world famous classics. The fundamental doctrine of the works is the Tao - e.d. the way to the truth. In these books there're a lot of fables, stories and fairy tales, in which untold expressions of emotions are used as social behaviours.
According to the traditional Chinese philosophy, the human emotions can be classified into five elements or rather wandering phases, namely the wood, the fire, the earth, the metal and the water. Each element stands for one of the wandering phases.
The wandering emotions wood and fire can be reduced to the substance Yang (e.d. male, e.g. both indignation and rapture belong to passion). The wandering emotions metal and water can be reduced to the substance Yin (e.d. female, e.g. both depression and timidity belong to dejection). The wandering emotion earth (yearning) is the most essential element, in which all the other elements can be incorporated. If Yin and Yang harmonize to each other, there will be a great peaceful coordination.
For each wandering emotion we have chosen a primary expression and a secondary expression to observe in the Chinese language. In this way we have all together ten language expressions in our studying framework marking the five wandering emotions. At the internal side of the framework stand the 5 primary expressions: nù, xi, si you, kong and, at the external side of the framework stand the five secondary expressions: wù, ài, yù bei and jing.


The basis of the studying framework of the research work lies in the procedure of semantic factors. A very important background is that, eath of the ten emotional expressions has more than one semantic value. Although the ten expressions can merely theoretically possibly be translated into German for the internal phases as Zorn, Freude, Grübelei, Kummer and Furcht, and for the external phases as Haß, Liebe, Begierde, Trauer and Schreck, there are however in fact a lot of other possibilities for the translation. With reference to the German and English versions of the works Zhuangzi, we have found the translation of the related expressions much more complicated, sophisticated and sometimes even confusing. Confronted to this situation we have first of all to find out the actual semantic value used by an expression of emotion in the original quotation of the works Zhuangzi. This implies, that the semantic procedure has to be applied context sensitively. For example, the Nù in the quotation 5/2/38 "Ju gong fu yu, yue: zhao san mu si, zhong ju jie nù" possesses the semantic factor +1Hc, e.g. anger, rage (German: Zorn, Wut) and is translated into erzürnt and böse by both German versions and into furious by the English version. Whereas the Nù in the quotation 1/1/2 "Hua er wei niao, qi ming wei Peng. Peng zhi bei, bu zhi ji qian li ye, nù er fei, qi yi ruo chui tian zhi yun." possesses the semantic factor +4H, e.g. vigour, vitality (German: tatkräftig, energisch handeln), and is translated figuratively, for instance by one German version, into kreisend to denote the exertion. According to psychlinguistrics +4H is a variety and a physical embodiment of +1H.

The wandering emotions are neither isolated nor static. On the contrary they are integrated, dynamic and always in motion. They may bring forth or eliminatate one another. The wandering expression of the emotions ist an important domain of psycholinguistics. For instance, the si in the quotation 13/5/32 from the book The Virtues "Zhang fu yu zhi chu zhe, si er bu neng qu ye" is translated into zugetan by a German version, although it is origionally a wandering emotion earth. No wonder, this is due to the fact, that the fire brings forth the earth with the wandering of the emotion affection to that of yearning.

Based uopn the many quotations with the semantic procedure the translation of the related expressions is evaluated. The main task of the research consists of the interlinguistic and psycholinguistic critical study of the ten expressions found in the Inner Chapters of the works Zhuangzi and their German and English versions. Upon each quotation we comment in the following way:

1. Determination with arguments of the semantic factor for a given expression of emotion in the original context.
2. An interlinguistic critical observation of the emotional expressions in comparison with two German and one English translations. German Version D1 by Sylvia Luetjohann, D2 by Richard Wilhelm; English version E by Burton Watson.
3. A semantic analysis of the translatedcounterparts in accordance with dictionaries (Duden, Webster stc.)
4. Psycholinguistic analysis of emotional concepts in accordance with the modern emotion studies by Carroll E. Izard etc.
5. Explaination of the possibly wandering of an emotional expression (for example, it is explained, how the emotion is changed and where the wandering zone situates.
6. Evaluation of the translations in terms of their strategies, particularities and their excellent, interesting or doubtful points.

Our experience has convinced us, that the language expressions of wandering emotions can be translated in most of the cases. The feasibility of the translation lies in the universal Désigné of emotions, or rather the emotional universality. The necessity of translation lies in the difference of Désignants between the language pairs. Available are the language and cultural barriers. In order to overcome these barriers, we have to make use of the language transfer as an essential device.

Five strategies are applied for the language transfer for the translation of expressions of emotions from the original Chinese classics into German and English:

1) literal translation;
2) figurative translation;
3) free translation or paraphrases;
4) metaphor, implicit or indirect translation;
5) translation by tranformation.

This is a project report presented to the Centre of Cultural Sciences, University Paderborn for the cooperative project "Verstehen und Aneignen chinesischen Denkens durch das Deutsche (Understanding and Mastering of Chinese Thinking by means of German)" Abundant valuable materials are available in terms of language expressions of emotions as social behaviours.

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