A RIH’s Digital Humanities Seed Grant awarded project

Abstract

This comprehensive study merges the fields of digital humanities, psychology, and translation studies, marking a pioneering interdisciplinary approach. It focuses on the translation of Louis Cha’s renowned Condor Trilogy, specifically A Hero Born: The Legend of the Condor Heroes. The research compares Anna Holmwood’s 2018 professional translation of the first nine chapters with a fan translation from an online forum. The study employs innovative digital humanities methods, including text mining, sentiment analysis, and visualization techniques, moving beyond traditional close reading to a computational distant reading approach. Central to this study is an examination of translators’ behaviors and how different translation types—fan-based and professional—affect character portrayals in literature. By analyzing translations of the same text, the study reveals significant differences in character depiction. These variations are quantitatively assessed using the Big Five personality traits, highlighting that fan translations, influenced by collective perceptions within fan communities, exhibit greater disparities, particularly in main characters. These findings show the distinct approaches and priorities of fan and professional translators, particularly in terms of character interpretation and emotional resonance. The research offers insights into the use of digital humanities tools in translation studies. It demonstrates how computational methods can objectively assess subjective interpretations and delineate the variances between fan and professional translations.

Dr. Lidia Mengyuan ZHOU
Lecturer
Department of Translation
The Chinese University of Hong Kong

Biography 
Dr. Lidia Mengyuan ZHOU serves as a Lecturer at the Department of Translation, The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK). Her primary areas of research encompass digital humanities within translation studies, Chinese-Portuguese-English translation/interpreting, and translation technology. She has contributed several articles to international peer-reviewed journals, addressing subjects such as comparative literature, dynamics in Chinese-Portuguese-English indirect translation, and poetry translation. In 2021-2022, she led a research endeavor titled “Image of Contemporary China in Portugal: Reception of Chinese Contemporary Literature (2000-2020)”, funded by the Macau Government. Additionally, she is the Principal Investigator for two digital humanities projects, funded by the CUHK, centered on the English and Portuguese translations of Louis Cha’s literary works.