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THESIS:   A Normative Approach to the Text Generation of English Abstracts for Papers in Literary Studies

 

SPECIALIZATION:                   English (Translation Studies)

POSTGRADUATE:                   Gui Tao

MENTOR:                                  Professor Cao Jianxin

 

       This research attempts to explore the generic structure and linguistic features of English abstracts for papers in literary studies from a normative approach. The abstract is an indispensable part of a research paper. It is essential for the abstract itself to follow the discourse conventions that characterize the specific genre of writing. However, there is very little research on the translation of abstracts of papers in literary studies. Although there are guidelines regarding the structure of English abstracts both in China and America, they are often vague, general and sometimes conflicting each other. Most of the rules only roughly refer to the composition of the English abstract, while rarely mentioning the textual-linguistic aspects of the abstract and the mistakes which may possibly occur during the rendering of the text because of the differences between Chinese and English. In addition, some textual-linguistic and structural features in abstracts have not been explored. These unexplored features, including the definition of culture-loaded or unfamiliar terms and the strategy of modesty, just to name a few, come with the fact that most Chinese students translate or ask others to translate their Chinese abstracts into English. Since the “translation of abstracts” is a reality in China, the present research addresses related problems that occur during the translation.

       The research methodology consists of an Internet survey, building of a corpus with 120 Chinese and English abstracts produced by Chinese students and their American counterparts, and comparative and descriptive studies of these abstracts.

       The results of the Internet survey indicate that most Chinese students produce their English abstracts by translating, or asking others to translate, their Chinese abstracts, rather than directly writing in English mainly because of their lack of English proficiency and because most of them fail to realize that English abstracts should be a self-contained and rule-governed text rather than a literal translation of their Chinese abstracts which are found always incomplete in structure in my research.

       I divided the 80 English abstracts in the corpus within a framework of four generic moves: background - research methodology - research findings - conclusions.

The following norms reflect that an English abstract should follow some academic criteria.

First, a four-move structure of background - research methodology - research findings - conclusion should be followed and at the beginning of an English abstract, it is preferred to use one sentence to summarize the content of the whole article. Especially, the Methodology part and the Conclusion part should be added to the English abstracts no matter whether these parts are included in the Chinese abstracts or not.

Second, the simple present tense, simple past tense and the present perfect tense can be used in the Background part of an English abstract and no past present tense and present progressive tense should be used. The simple present tense or a gerund phrase or a prepositional phrase can be used in the Methodology part while the future tense and the simple past tense should not be used. The simple present tense should be used to report the findings in this part. The simple present tense should be used in the Conclusion part.

Third, culture-loaded words should be presented with a short explanation to the foreign readers.

Fourth, no self-denigration expression should be used.

Fifth, the surname and first name should be capitalized with a blank between them to present people’s names in the abstract and italicization should be used to present a book in an English abstract.

Sixth, “I” and “This/My dissertation/thesis” should be used to start a sentence in an English abstract.

 Seventh, metaphors, similes and hyperboles can rarely be used in an English abstract.

       This thesis demonstrates that an English abstract should be regarded as a self-contained and rule-governed text rather than a literally rendered counterpart of an incomplete Chinese abstract. It is expected to enhance students' awareness of producing (translating or writing) English abstracts by referring to a set of norms.

 

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