English Translations of Mencius from Three Different Centuries: A progression to More Gender-neutral Language

Lai Lanlan, Emily Lau, Nael Hijjo

Abstract


Mencius’ teachings, deeply entrenched in the male-dominated discourse of ancient China, have historically been interpreted from a masculine viewpoint. However, the rise of the feminist movement and advancements in global communication have significantly expanded the audience for Mencius’ philosophy. Concurrently, the English language, influenced by feminist perspectives, has been evolving towards a more gender-neutral style. Against this backdrop, this study explores how translators from three different centuries interpret the unmarked gender language in Mencius. The research adopts a socio-cognitive approach to examine how the linguistic representations link to the cognitive schemas in translation studies with the aid of corpus. The parallel corpus comprises one ST and three TTs (Bloom, 2009; Legge, 1895; Zhao et al., 1999). The research finds that Zhao et al. and Legge prefer generic masculine words. In contrast, Bloom opts for gender-neutral words to interpret the gender-unspecific words in Mencius. This change from an androcentric to a gender-neutral language style reflects the evolving social norms and the translator's subjectivity in challenging or reinforcing prevailing gender stereotypes. The entrenched principle of "MALE-As Norm" deeply influences the stereotypes and cultural schemas that affect how translators behave. This can trigger automatic cognitive schemas, which, in turn, affect the translational choices in selecting generic masculine words. This research underscores the potential of corpus analysis to enrich the study of translation style from a socio-cognitive perspective. The socio-cognitive approach provides a robust theoretical framework, contributing to a nuanced understanding of the complexities of translation style through the interdisciplinary lens of cognition and translation.

 

Keywords: translation style; generic masculine; gender-neutral language; cognitive schema; Mencius


Full Text:

PDF

References


Aikhenvald, A. Y. (2016). How gender shapes the world. Oxford University Press.

Alasfour, A. M. (2021). Translating Women in the Quran: A Corpus-Based Analysis (Doctoral dissertation, Kent State University). Research Repository. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent1619165912215171

Albir, A. H., & Alves, F. (2009). Translation as a cognitive activity. In Munday, J. (Ed.), The Routledge Companion to translation studies (pp. 68-87). Routledge.

Alvanoudi, A. (2014). Grammatical gender in interaction: Cultural and cognitive aspects. (Vol. 9). Brill.

Alvanoudi, A. (2020). Indexing gender, culture, and cognition. An introduction. Journal of Language and Discrimination, 4(1), 1-15. https://doi.org/10.1558/jld.40948

Bailey, A. H., LaFrance, M., & Dovidio, J. F. (2019). Is man the measure of all things? A social cognitive account of androcentrism. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 23(4), 307–331. https://doi.org/10.1177/1088868318782848

Birdwhistell, J. D. (2007). Mencius and masculinities: Dynamics of power, morality, and maternal thinking. State University of New York Press.

Bloom, I. (2009). Mencius. Columbia University Press.

Boase-Beier, J. (2011). A critical introduction to translation studies. Bloomsbury Publishing.

Bodenhausen, G. V., & Wyer, R. S. (1985). Effects of stereotypes in decision making and information-processing strategies. Journal of personality and social psychology, 48(2), 267.

Bodine, A. (1975). Androcentrism in prescriptive grammar: singular ‘they’, sex-indefinite ‘he’, and ‘he or she’1. Language in society, 4(2), 129-146.

Braun, F. (1997). Making men out of people. The MAN principle in translating genderless forms. PRAGMATICS AND BEYOND NEW SERIES, 3-30.

Bußmann, H., & Hellinger, M. (2003). Gender across languages. John Benjamins.

Chan, S. (2000). Gender and Relationship Roles in the Analects and the Mencius. Asian Philosophy, 10(2), 115-132. https://doi.org/10.1080/09552360050121119

Ding, S. (2020). 孟子“天下之言性也”章研究与检讨 (Mengzi “Tianxia zhi yan xing ye” zhang yanjiu yu jiantao - A study and review on “All under heaven discuss the nature” in Mencius). Modern Philosophy, 3, 130-140.

Di Sabato, B., & Perri, A. (2020). Grammatical gender and translation: A cross-linguistic overview. In Von Flotow, L., & Kamal, H. (Eds.), The Routledge handbook of translation, feminism and gender (pp. 363-373). Routledge.

Farris, C. S. (1988). Gender and grammar in Chinese: With implications for language universals. Modern China, 14(3), 277-308. https://doi.org/10.1177/009770048801400302

Garnham, A., Gabriel, U., Sarrasin, O., Gygax, P., & Oakhill, J. (2012). Gender representation in different languages and grammatical marking on pronouns: When beauticians, musicians, and mechanics remain men. Discourse Processes, 49(6), 481-500. https://doi.org/10.1080/0163853X .2012.688184

Garnham, A., Oakhill, J., Von Stockhausen, L., & Sczesny, S. (2016). Editorial: Language, cognition, and gender. Language, Cognition and Gender, 6.

Gygax, P., Sato, S., Öttl, A., & Gabriel, U. (2021). The masculine form in grammatically gendered languages and its multiple interpretations: A challenge for our cognitive system. Language Sciences, 83, 101328. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langsci.2020.101328

Halverson, S. L. (2013). Implications of cognitive linguistics for translation studies. In Rojo & Ibarretxe-Antuñano (Eds.) Advances in Some Theoretical Models and Applications, (pp. 33-74).

Hamilton, M. C. (1991). Masculine bias in the attribution of personhood: People= male, male= people. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 15(3), 393-402. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1471-6402.1991.tb00415.x

Hatim, B., & Mason, I. (2014). Discourse and the Translator. Routledge.

Hyde, J. S. (1984). How large are gender differences in aggression? A developmental meta-analysis. Developmental psychology, 20(4), 722.

Kintsch, W. (1988). The role of knowledge in discourse comprehension: A construction-integration model. Psychological review, 95(2), 163.

Kiraly, D. (2014). A social constructivist approach to translator education: Empowerment from theory to practice. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315760186

Lau, D. C. (2003). Mencius. Penguin Classics.

Legge, J. (1895). The Life and Teachings of Mencius (Vol2). Clarendon Press.

Li, C. N., & Thompson, S. A. (1989). Mandarin Chinese: A functional reference grammar. University of California Press.

Li, D. (2017). Translator style: A corpus-assisted approach. In Ji, M., Oakes, M., Li, D., & Hareide, L. (Eds.), Corpus Methodologies Explained: An Empirical Approach to Translation Studies (pp. 103-136). Routledge.

Liu, A. H., Shair-Rosenfield, S., Vance, L. R., & Csata, Z. (2018). Linguistic origins of gender equality and women’s rights. Gender & Society, 32(1), 82-108. https://doi.org/10.1177/0891243217 741428

Mahlberg, M., & McIntyre, D. (2011). A case for corpus stylistics: Ian Fleming’s Casino Royale. English Text Construction, 4(2), 204-227. https://doi.org/10.1075/etc.4.2.03mah

Meng, L. (2020). Translating gender from Chinese into English: a case study of Leaden Wings from feminist perspective. Cogent Arts & Humanities, 7(1), 1853894. https://doi.org/10.1080/

Moindjie, M. A., & Rahamatullah, U. S. (2024). Manipulation of Gender in the Translations of I am Malala and Things Fall Apart. 3L: Southeast Asian Journal of English Language Studies, 30(2).

Moulton, J., Robinson, G. M., & Elias, C. (1978). Sex bias in language use: “Neutral” pronouns that aren’t. American psychologist, 33(11), 1032.

Oakhill, J., Garnham, A., & Reynolds, D. (2005). Immediate activation of stereotypical gender information. Memory & cognition, 33, 972-983.

Olalere, O. (2023). Translating the Generic ‘man’: A Case Study of the two German Translations of Proverbs in Achebe’s No Longer at Ease. Belas Infiéis, 12(1), 01-19.

Pyykkönen, P., Hyönä, J., & Van Gompel, R. P. (2010). Activating gender stereotypes during online spoken language processing. Experimental Psychology, 57(2), 126-33.

Rayson, P., & Garside, R. (2000). Comparing corpora using frequency profiling. In Proceedings of the workshop on Comparing Corpora (pp. 1-6). Hong Kong: China. https://doi.org/10.3115/1117729.1117730

Redl, T., Frank, S. L., De Swart, P., & De Hoop, H. (2021). The male bias of a generically-intended masculine pronoun: Evidence from eye-tracking and sentence evaluation. PloS one, 16(4), e0249309. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0249309

Redl, T., Szuba, A., de Swart, P., Frank, S. L., & de Hoop, H. (2022). Masculine generic pronouns as a gender cue in generic statements. Discourse Processes, 59(10), 828-845. https://doi.org/10.1080/0163853X.2022.2148071

Risku, H., & Rogl, R. (2022). Praxis and process meet halfway: The convergence of sociological and cognitive approaches in translation studies. Translation & Interpreting: The International Journal of Translation and Interpreting Research, 14(2), 32-49. https://doi.org/10.12807/ti.114202.2022.a03

Rumelhart, D. E., & Ortony, A. (1977). The representation of knowledge in memory. In R.C. Anderson, R.J. Spiro & W.E. Montague (Eds.), Schooling and the acquisition of knowledge. (1st ed., pp. 99-135). Routledge.

Saldanha, G. (2011). Translator style: Methodological considerations. The Translator, 17(1), 25-50. https://doi.org/10.1080/13556509.2011.10799478

Samuel, S., Cole, G., & Eacott, M. J. (2019). Grammatical gender and linguistic relativity: A systematic review. Psychon Bull Rev 26, 1767–1786. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-019-01652-3

Schütze, C. (2020). Comprehension of gender-neutral forms and the pseudo-generic masculine in German: a visual world eye-tracking study: ‘It goes without saying’that everyone is included? (Doctoral dissertation, Universität Potsdam). Research Repository. https://doi.org/10.25932/publishup-48415

Simon, S. (1996). Gender in Translation: Cultural Identity and the Politics of Transmission, London and New York: Routledge.

Toury, G. (2012). Descriptive Translation Studies: And beyond. John Benjamins, Amsterdam/ Philadelphia.

Yang, B. (1960). Mengzi Yizhu (孟子译注). Zhonghua Book Company.

Zhao, Z., Zhang, W., & Zhou, D. (1999). Mencius. Hunan People’s Publishing House.




DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17576/3L-2025-3101-20

Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.


 

 

 

eISSN : 2550-2247

ISSN : 0128-5157