Lexical lacunas in Xiao Hong's novel "Tales of Hulan river": characteristics and classification

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Taras Shevchenko national university of Kyiv

Lexical lacunas in Xiao Hong's novel «Tales of Hulan river»: characteristics and classification

Li Yanxue,

PhD student at department of languages and literatures of the Fareast and Southeast Asia

Abstract

The novels of Xiao Hong have attracted close attention of the research community since their publication. Research on Xiao Hong's work has been going on for almost 80 years, the English translation of the novel «Tales of hulan river» was made back in the 1970s, but there is no Russian translation yet. Due to the differences in Chinese and Western culture, when translating the novel «Tales of hulan river», a lot of lexical lacunas are found. So the actual taskof this article was to resolve the issue of how to take into account the general cultural differences and linguistic features of the author when translating, as well as competently eliminate these lacunas in the translation process. From the point of view of the classification of vocabulary according to the principle of cultural characteristics, and in accordance with the opinion of the Chinese linguist Liu Xun regarding the theory of cultural hierarchy, in this article, the lexical lacunas from the «Tales of hulan river» are divided into lexical lacunas of material culture, lexical lacunas of conceptual culture, lexical lacunas of behavioral culture and lexical lacunas of institutional culture. Their number is also counted and the general characteristics of four types of lexical lacunas are analyzed based on the language style of Xiao Hong. This is the noveltyof this article. The results of the statistical analysisof lexical lacunas in the text are briefly summarized as follows: 1) The lexical lacunas of material culture take clothing, headwear and furniture as examples, with noun content words as the main, and function words mainly in geographic and solar terms; 2) Taking the appellation relationship as an example for the lexical lacunas of institutional culture, the lexical structure includes simple appellation and compound appellation, and the compound appellation structure includes combination «attributive + main element», combination «appositional + appositional element» and complex nested combination; 3) The lexical lacunas of behavioral culture take behavioral habits, lifestyles and customs and superstitions as examples, mainly nouns, verbs, and verb structures, and the verb structure as adverbial is a feature; 4) The lexical lacunas of conceptual culture take aesthetic taste and way of thinking as examples, mainly color words, sound words, four-character idioms, and feature ABB, AABB and other forms. The prospect of further research lies in the possibility of identifying lacunas in the text based on this classification and narrowing the scope of the search for equivalents for them in the target language.

Key words: literary translation, classification of culturally marked lexical items, lacuna, lexical characteristics, «Tales of hulan river» by Xiao Hong.

Анотація

Лексичні лакуни в романі Сяо Хун «Легенди про Хуланьхе»: характеристика та класифікація

Твори Сяо Хун привернули до себе пильну увагу дослідницької спільноти з їх публікації. Дослідження творчості Сяо Хун ведуться вже майже 80 років, англійський переклад роману «Легенди про Хуланьхе» було виконано ще у 1970-х роках, проте російського перекладу поки що немає. Через відмінності в китайській та західній культурі, при перекладі роману «Легенди про Хуланьхе» виявляється безліч лексичних лакун, Тому актуальним завданням цієї статті стало вирішення питання про те, як врахувати при перекладі загальнокультурні відмінності та мовні особливості автора, а також грамотно усунути ці лакуни у процесі перекладу. З точки зору класифікації лексики за принципом культурних особливостей і згідно з думкою китайського лінгвіста Лю Сюня щодо теорії культурної ієрархії, в даній статті лексичні лакуни з «Легенд про Хуланьхе» поділяються на лексичні лакуни концептуальної культури, лексичні лакуни матеріальної культури, лексичні лакуни лексичні лакуни інституційної культури Також підраховується їх кількість та аналізуються загальні характеристики чотирьох типів лексичних лакун на основі мовного стилю Сяо Хун. Це становить новизну цієї статті. Результати статистичного аналізу лексичних лакун у тексті коротко резюмуються наступним чином: 1) лексичні лакуни матеріальної культури включають назви предметів одягу, головних уборів, меблів та предметів першої необхідності як приклади. Слова знаменні становлять більшість, а службові - здебільшого сконцентровані у географічних та календарних термінах; 2) лексичні лакуни інституційної культури включають як приклади звернення, зокрема просте і складове звернення. Лексична структура складового звернення є комбінацією «атрибутивний + основний елемент», комбінацію «апозиційний + апазіцій - ний елемент» і складну вкладену комбінацію; 3) лексичні лакуни поведінкової культури як приклади представляють поведінкові звички, спосіб життя, звичаї та забобони. Іменники, дієслова та дієслівні конструкції в них становлять більшість, а дієслівні конструкції використовуються як прислівники - це основна характеристика. 4) лексичні лакуни концептуальної культури описують як приклади естетичну привабливість і спосіб мислення. У більшості випадків використовуються колоративи, звуконаслідування, чотирискладові ідіоми. З погляду лексичної структури, використання подвоєння унікальне: зустрічаються подвоєння за формулою ABBі AABB. Перспектива подальших досліджень полягає у можливості ідентифікувати у тексті лакун на основі даної класифікації та звузити сферу пошуку еквівалентів для них у мові перекладу.

Ключові слова: художній переклад, класифікація культурно-маркованої лексики, лакуна, лексична характеристика, «Легенди про Хуланьхе» Сяо Хун.

Main part

translation language lexical lacuna

Problem statement. The famous Chinese writer Xiao Hong (1911-1942, Hulan City, Heilongjiang Province) is an outstanding figure in the history of modern Chinese literature. In less than ten years of her creative career, she wrote almost a million words. The representative works are the novel «Tales of hulan river», short and medium stories, such as «Field of Life and Death», «March in the Province», etc. Themes and descriptions of many of Xiao Hong's works, representing landscapes and people's lives in Northeast China. Thus, we can say that she is also an excellent writer of literature with a regional flavor. In addition to its literary value, Xiao Hong's unique style is also worthy of deep study, since it can not only serve as an important reference point for the study of Beijing and the northeastern dialects, but also for the study of the common Han Chinese language - Putonghua.

Translation of Chintese outstanding literary works has always been a top priority for Chinese translators and sinologists from all over the world, as it allows more foreign readers to understand Chinese culture and literature. But literary translation is an intercultural language translation, it should be understandable to readers from other countries who speak a different language and are carriers of a different culture. Among the works of Xiao Hong, the most representative in terms of regional color is the novel «Tales of hulan river», written in 1939. At that time, Chinese society was in conflict between the old and new cultures, and the traditional way of life was influenced by various foreign cultures. Xiao Hong writes in the first person in the novel and uses the colloquial Baihua interspersed with dialects to tell everyone family stories as they unfolded in the old society and northeastern culture. Due to cultural differences caused by time and region, as well as one's own language preferences, in the process of translating the vocabulary of the novel «Tales of hulan river» there are many lacunas By lacuna (Лакуна), we mean the phenomenon of cultural and semantic inconsistency at the level of vocabulary when comparing two languages, that is, a cultural connotation or semantic basis expressed by words in one language does not exist in another. This phenomenon may be more or less obvious and will be gradually verbalized depending on objective needs. There are two forms of such discrepancy between languages: (1) The concept of one language is not verbalized in another lan-guage, that is, there is no lexical correspondence, it is REALITY (РЕАЛИЯ). (2) Another form is that a concept in one language has a lexical correspondence with it in another language, but this correspondence is incomplete, the semantic scope is differ-ent, and there is an inclusive relationship. At the moment, we call this phenomenon HALF-REALITY (ПОЛУРЕАЛИЯ- semantic reality). All such words that have inconsistencies or incomplete matches when comparing two languages are called non-equiv-alent vocabulary from the point of view of the source language, and are called lacuna from the point of view of the target lan-guage. With this understanding, the term "REALITY" belongs to non-equivalent vocabulary in the source language.. The study of culture and an attempt to classify culturemes Cultureme - the term was introduced by the French soci-ologist A. Moles (Abraham Moles, 1973) - "the atom of culture"; random accumulation of culturemes forms the culture of a par-ticular community [1, p. 210]., the choice of principles for the classification of lexical lacunas and a sufficient preliminary analysis of the language style are the keys to obtaining high-quality translations.

Purpose of the article. This article discusses the classification of culturemes, makes a choice of rational methods of such classification. The author counts the number of lexical lacunas in the novel «Tales of hulan river» associated precisely with the presence of culturemes, and also examines the features of Xiao Hong's language style to analyze the characteristics of lexical lacunas in her works.

1. Research in matters of culture and classification of cultural phenomena

Analysis of recent research and publications.

Because researchers have different starting points, culture has different meanings, frameworks, and elements. The central concept of anthropology, especially cultural anthropology, is culture. The first to define culture from an anthropological point of view was the Edward Burnett Tylor, who wrote in his book «Primitive Culture», published in 1871: «Culture or Civilization, taken in its wide ethnographic sense, is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society.» [2, p. 11]. In the above definition, Taylor pointed to the integrity of culture, which most anthropologists agree on. Therefore, until now, when discussing cultural concepts in the field of anthropology and other fields, people still cannot get around this classical definition. In 1952, when prominent American anthropologists Alfred Louis Kreober and C. Kluckhohn were discussing the concepts of culture, according to their calculations in «Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions», there were already more than 160 influential definitions of the concept of «culture» proposed by scientists in the field of sociology, psychology and other disciplines. And the world - famous orientalist and linguist Ji Xianlin bluntly said that «they say that there are more than 500 definitions of culture in the world, and it is better for me not to give another definition. It will simply be an additional definition to the 500 existing ones. So the problem cannot be solved» [3, p. 1].

Chinese characters can also be considered a kind of definition of the concept of «culture» for the Chinese. The word «culture» in Chinese consists of two hieroglyphs: ftft, where the first hieroglyph (ft) comes from the image of a tattoo on the body, indicates something artificially made (by man, not nature), and the second (ft) - represents two identical elements (the human body) in a mirror image, means «changes, transformations». Thus, in the understanding of the Chinese, culture is that which is produced by man (artificially) in order to transform the world.

Definition makes the world our world, and classification makes the world more suitable for our mind. People can perceive the surrounding natural and social cultural environment through classification. The classification of cultural phenomena is the same as the definition of culture. But this is a broader topic. Many scientists around the world have done research on this topic and put forward their different opinions. For example, the famous American linguist and translation theorist Eugene A. Nida divided cultural phenomena into areas: ecology, material culture, social culture, religious culture and linguistic culture [4, p. 54]. These five aspects include the material and spiritual levels. The Russian historian Yu. N. Zhukov, in his book «Fundamentals of the Theory of Culture», proposed to single out three forms (types) of culture, namely: 1) material (human relations with nature and artificial habitat); 2) social (relationships with other people, or social relations) and 3) spiritual culture (relationships with oneself, inner wealth of the individual) [5, p. 92]. At the same time, social relations are usually referred to as spiritual culture, thereby reducing the number of forms of culture to two - material (a set of material values) and spiritual (a set of spiritual values). From the point of view of culture reception, the traditional approach to classification is to single out the dominant culture and subculture [6, p. 10]. A subculture refers to a non-mainstream culture that exists within a particular mainstream culture-the culture of a particular minority group. Edward T. Hall, the founder of the theory of intercultural communication, pointed out in «The Silent Language» that culture exists on two levels: an overt culture and a covert culture. The first is visible and descriptive, the second is invisible, and it is difficult to detect it even for specially trained observers [7, p. 85]. Many scholars believe that the discourse of overt culture and a covert culture is still the most accurate and scientific description of culture. The biggest advantage of this classification is that it has a wide range, avoids duplication of cultural classifications, can reveal the essence of a culture in simple words, but this cultural classification can lead to more subcategories. Liu Xun, a professor at Peking University of Language and Culture, in his book «Introduction to Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language» divides cultural phenomena into four types, arranging them in a certain hierarchy: material culture, behavioral culture, institutional culture and conceptual culture. At the same time, material culture refers to all objects created as a result of processing and transformation by a person, including various tools, food, tobacco and alcohol, clothes, buildings, etc.; Behavioral culture refers to all cultural factors associated with various human behaviors, including interpersonal communicative behavior (linguistic and non-linguistic), norms of etiquette, codes of conduct, etc., as well as non-communicative general social behaviors such as vacation, love, marriage, lifestyle, customs, etc.; Conceptual culture refers to all cultural factors associated with a person's worldview and values, including values, way of thinking, national psychology, aesthetic appeal, ethics, religious beliefs, etc.; Institutional culture is an organized normative system created by people for the needs of their own survival and social development. The legal system, political system, economic system and various relationships between people are all phenomena of institutional culture [8, p. 119].

It is easy to see from Liu Xun's classification that it does not contradict the views of other scientists mentioned above, but is additional and more detailed. First, this classification corresponds to the hierarchy of cultural phenomena adopted in Chinese cultural studies and covering two main categories - material culture and spiritual culture. In addition, material and behavioral culture belong to overt culture, while institutional and conceptual culture belong to covert culture. The relationship between them is shown in the diagram below.

From the above classification of cultural phenomena proposed by scientists, it can be seen that studies in this area are becoming more and more detailed, and various classifications intersect with each other. Moreover, classifications of cultural phenomena usually differ depending on the field of research of the author, and different schools can be divided according to different points of view.

2. Statistics and classification of lexical lacunas in the novel «Tales of hulan river»

Presentation of the main material. According to the statistics of the author of this article, there are a total of 1504 lexical lacunas in the novel «Tales of hulan river» caused by cultural and linguistic factors. Taking into account the elements of cultural information presented in the vocabulary of this novel, and Liu Xun's opinion, which is most suitable for the study of our subject, presenting the theory of the hierarchy of cultural phenomena, the lexical lacunas in the novel are classified as follows.

The proportion of various lexical lacunas in the novel «Tales of hulan river» is represented by the following statistics on a pie chart (Fig. 2):

Fig.1. Relations between elements of overt and covert cultures