1,025 research outputs found
Power and the translator: Joseph Conrad in Chinese translations during the Republican era (1912-1937)
When he died in 1924, Joseph Conrad, who was named a ‘racist’ by Chinua Achebe
(1977) and defended by others as taking an anti-imperialist stance (Brantlinger 1996), was a
total stranger to the Chinese readers, whose country was made a semi-colony in the late
nineteenth century. In the 1930s, however, four of his works were translated and published
within four years, all commissioned by the Committee on Editing and Translation funded by
the China Foundation for the Promotion of Education and Culture.
The thesis investigates the Chinese translations of Conrad’s works published during the
Republican Era in 1912-1937, exploring the power relations between the translators as agents
and the social structure in which they operated. The thesis is divided into six chapters. After
the introduction, I describe, in Chapter 2, the translators’ practice in terms of their narrating
positions on the textual and paratextual levels as reflected in the translations of the sea
stories borrowing analytical models on narrative discourse devised by Gérard Genette and
Roger Fowler. I proceed in Chapter 3 with an account of the commissioner, tracking down
the organization of the China Foundation and the Committee on Editing and Translation
which initiated the project of translating World Classics (including Conrad’s works) in the
1930s. In Chapter 4, I reassess the notion of ‘faithfulness’, a key concept in the discourse of
translation in theory and criticism at the time. Using Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of practice as
the theoretical framework, I argue that the practice of the translators, who created the image
of Conrad through their translations, can be explained with reference to their relations with
other agents (commissioners, theorists, critics, etc.) occupying different positions within the
intellectual field, and the habitus which mediated their position and the social structure they
were engaged in Chapter 5, followed by the conclusion
Two-Dimensional Picture Grammar Models.
A new theoretical model of grammatical picture generation
called extended 2D context-free picture grammar
(E2DCFPG) generating rectangular picture arrays of symbols
is introduced. This model which allows variables in
the grammar and uses the squeezing mechanism of forming
the picture language over terminal symbols, is an extension
of the pure 2D context-free picture grammar (P2DCFPG)
[13]. The extended picture grammar model E2DCFPG
is shown to have more picture generative power than the
P2DCFPG and certain other existing 2D models. Certain
closure and other properties of this new model are also examine
Current-density functional for disordered systems
The effective action for the current and density is shown to satisfy an
evolution equation, the functional generalization of Callan-Symanzik equation.
The solution describes the dependence of the one-particle irreducible vertex
functions on the strength of the quenched disorder and the annealed Coulomb
interaction. The result is non-perturbative, no small parameter is assumed. The
a.c. conductivity is obtained by the numerical solution of the evolution
equation on finite lattices in the absence of the Coulomb interaction. The
static limit is performed and the conductivity is found to be vanishing beyond
a certain threshold of the impurity strength.Comment: final version, 28 pages, 17 figures, to appear in Phys. Rev.
Selection rules for J^PC Exotic Hybrid Meson Decay in Large-N_c
The coupling of a neutral hybrid {1,3,5...}^-+ exotic particle (or current)
to two neutral (hybrid) meson particles with the same J^PC and J=0 is proved to
be sub-leading to the usual large-N_c QCD counting. The coupling of the same
exotic particle to certain two - (hybrid) meson currents with the same J^PC and
J=0 is also sub-leading. The decay of a {1,3,5...}^-+ hybrid to eta pi^0, eta'
pi^0, eta' eta, eta(1295) pi^0, pi(1300)^0 pi0, eta(1440) pi^0, a_0(980)^0
sigma or f_0(980) sigma is sub-leading, assuming that these final state
particles are (hybrid) mesons in the limit of large N_c.Comment: 16 pages, LaTeX. Main paper shortened/rewritten and appendices
expanded. Implications for phenomenology of exotic hybrid mesons clarifie
On magnetic catalysis in even-flavor QED3
In this paper, we discuss the role of an external magnetic field on the
dynamically generated fermion mass in even-flavor QED in three space-time
dimensions. Based on some reasonable approximations, we present analytic
arguments on the fact that, for weak fields, the magnetically-induced mass
increases quadratically with increasing field, while at strong fields one
crosses over to a mass scaling logarithmically with the external field. We also
confirm this type of scaling behavior through quenched lattice calculations
using the non-compact version for the gauge field. Both the zero and finite
temperature cases are examined. A preliminary study of the fermion condensate
in the presence of magnetic flux tubes on the lattice is also included.Comment: 38 pages latex, 18 figures and a style file (axodraw) incorporated
(some clarifying remarks concerning the validity of the approximations made
and some references were added correcting an earlier version; no effect on
conclusions; version to appear in Phys. Rev. D.
Finite size scaling in the 2D XY-model and generalized universality
In recent works (BHP), a generalized universality has been proposed, linking
phenomena as dissimilar as 2D magnetism and turbulence. To test these ideas, we
performed a MC study of the 2D XY-model. We found that the shape of the
probability distribution function for the magnetization M is non Gaussian and
independent of the system size --in the range of the lattice sizes studied--
below the Kosterlitz-Thoules temperature. However, the shape of these
distributions does depend on the temperature, contrarily to the BHP's claim.
This behavior is successfully explained by using an extended finite-size
scaling analysis and the existence of bounds for M.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figures. Submitted to Phys. Rev. Lett. Details of changes:
1. We emphasized in the abstract the range of validity of our results. 2. In
the last paragraph the temperature dependence of the PDF was slightly
re-formulate
Heavy quark mass determination from the quarkonium ground state energy: a pole mass approach
The heavy quark pole mass in perturbation theory suffers from a renormalon
caused, inherent uncertainty of . This fundamental
difficulty of determining the pole mass to an accuracy better than the inherent
uncertainty can be overcome by direct resummation of the first infrared
renormalon. We show how a properly defined pole mass as well as the mass for the top and bottom quarks can be determined accurately from the
quarkonium ground state energy.Comment: 16 pages; published versio
A Gaussian Theory of Superfluid--Bose-Glass Phase Transition
We show that gaussian quantum fluctuations, even if infinitesimal, are
sufficient to destroy the superfluidity of a disordered boson system in 1D and
2D. The critical disorder is thus finite no matter how small the repulsion is
between particles. Within the gaussian approximation, we study the nature of
the elementary excitations, including their density of states and mobility edge
transition. We give the gaussian exponent at criticality in 1D and show
that its ratio to of the pure system is universal.Comment: Revtex 3.0, 11 pages (4 figures will be sent through airmail upon
request
Ground State and Excitations of Disordered Boson Systems
After an introduction to the dirty bosons problem, we present a gaussian
theory for the ground state and excitations. This approach is physically
equivalent to the Bogoliubov approximation. We find that ODLRO can be destroyed
with sufficient disorder. The density of states and localization of the
elementary excitations are discussed. (To appear in JLTP Proceedings of the
Conference on Condensed Bose Systems at the University of Minnesota, 1993.)Comment: 13 pages. (postscript file because of the figures inserted in the
text.
Universality and the magnetic catalysis of chiral symmetry breaking
The hypothesis that the magnetic catalysis of chiral symmetry breaking is due
to interactions of massless fermions in their lowest Landau level is examined
in the context of chirally symmetric models with short ranged interactions. It
is argued that, when the magnetic field is sufficiently large, even an
infinitesimal attractive interaction in the appropriate channel will break
chiral symmetry.Comment: 24 pages, 6 figures, REVTeX. The final version with minor
corrections. To appear in Phys Rev D60 (1999
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