Translation Analysis of Sensoji Temple Guanyin Divination from the Perspective of J. House’s Translation Quality Assessment Model

Abstract

Based on the Translation Quality Assessment Model, this paper investigates the translation of religious divination using the Sensoji temple Guanyin Divination as the corpus. It aims to explore the characteristics of translation and the value and image of Buddhism portrayed from the perspective of field, tenor, and mode in the register framework. The goal is to reveal the translations’ conceptual and interpersonal functions and overt and covert features. The corpus analysis indicates that most translations of divination are rendered in the genre of Chinese-style regulated verse, which is rich in Chinese connotations. At the field level, the translations reproduce the features of the source text using metaphors; at the tenor level, the translations employ the second-person pronouns and imperative sentences to bring the interpersonal distance between the translators and the readers closer and to enhance the emotional expression; at the mode level, the translators adopt a colloquial language style to make the translations more accessible, to effectively convey the interpersonal functions of the source text. Overall, the translations tend toward overt translation, highlighting the source text’s distinctive information and religious essence to achieve reader-translation interaction. At the same time, a certain degree of covert translation is also present. Given the limited research on the analysis of religious text translations, this study fills a gap in the field and provides new perspectives for further exploration in this domain.