Use of One-Syllable Articles in the Literary Chinese Translation Classroom

Abstract

In the past 40 years, Literary Chinese has taken a firm backseat in the world of Chinese translation, which has encouraged an increasing trend of employing Mandarin Chinese as a conduit for understanding the text. This trend distorts translation and interpretation decisions, such as through first translating the text into Mandarin Chinese and then translating the Mandarin Chinese into English. This article therefore argues that Literary Chinese should be defined and understood on its own terms, aiming to reduce the use of Mandarin Chinese as a proxy and promote direct engagement instead. To operationalise this argument, I (i) author a One-Syllable Article of the /wu/ syllable that resists clean translation into Mandarin Chinese, and (ii) provide a teacher interaction sequence that can intervene with the problem and guide students through glossary building and effective translation decision-making.