Approaching the Cross-Cultural Translation of Transgressive Language: Swearing and Vulgarities in the Chinese Vernacular Novel Jin Ping Mei

ABSTRACT

This article attempts to study how the richness of swearing expressions functions in the Chinese vernacular novel Jin Ping Mei (1617) and how it fares in the two English translations: The Golden Lotus (1939) and The Plum in the Golden Vase (2013). Based on the paradigm of descriptive translation studies, the study describes and compares translational strategies adopted by the translators using textual samples drawn from source and target texts. Findings suggest that the earlier translation is oriented to domestication through omission and attenuation of the original swearwords whereas the latest translation exhibits a foreignizing trend by faithfully rendering as many expletives as possible. Moreover, the study demonstrates that swearing in some ways pushes interlingual translation to face the extremes of its capacity and that both domesticating and foreignizing approaches are not effective enough to convey the intended communicative effects of swearwords and vulgarisms used by fictional characters, which negatively influences the novel’s discursive representation and characterization. Finally, the article not only sheds some light on the interlingual translation of non-standard language varieties in literary works but also proposes a more cautious approach to domestication and foreignization in the sphere of translation studies.

KEYWORDS:

• Transgressive discourse
• swearing
• vulgarisms
• jin ping mei
• intercultural communication
• Chinese vernacular fiction

Acknowledgments

The author wishes to thank the anonymous peer reviewers and editors for their insightful comments and suggestions for improving this work. Any remaining errors, however, are my own.

Disclosure statement

The author has no known conflict of interest to disclose.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Shuangjin Xiao

Shuangjin Xiao works as a freelance translator. He is a teaching assistant and doctoral student in the School of Languages and Cultures of Victoria University of Wellington. His research interests include translation studies, cultural studies, and discourse analysis. He is currently focusing on late imperial Chinese literature and its translation and reception in Western Europe and North America.