Main description:

A Deaf Take on Non-Equivalence in Written Chinese Translation examines the issue of lexical non-equivalence between written Chinese and Hong Kong Sign Language (HKSL) translation, describing its theoretical and practical implications.

This research foregrounds the semiotic resources in the Deaf community of Hong Kong by analysing translation strategies exhibited by Deaf Hongkongers when they were invited to translate written Chinese passages with specialized and cultural-specific concepts in a monologic setting. With discourse analysis as a framework, the major findings of this research were: 1) A taxonomy of strategies that featured depiction, manual representations of Chinese characters and visual metonymy, writing and mouthing; 2) Employment of multisemiotic and multimodal resources gave intended viewers access to different facets of meaning; 3) Repeated renditions of the same concepts gave rise to condensed, abbreviated nonce expressions.

Observations from this research serve as a point of reference for interpreting scholars, practitioners and students as well as policy makers that formulate interpretation service provision and assessment.

Contents:

Acknowledgement

Citing conventions

Annotation conventions of language examples and translation data

Chapter 1 Orientation to the sociolinguistic context of Deaf and hearing people in Hong Kong

Chapter 2 Foundation concepts: Translation studies and discourse analysis

Chapter 3 Engaging the Deaf community in written Chinese translation studies

Chapter 4 A taxonomy of Deaf translators' discourse strategies

Chapter 5 How discourse strategies come together: Intertranslator styles, construction of discourse space and translanguaging

Chapter 6 Maintaining referents and their evolution

Chapter 7 Guiding expectations

Appendix I Chinese source texts and their English translations

Appendix II List of target items

Index