case study in translation studies

The Cognitive Paradigm in Translation Studies

• First Online: 24 November 2020

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• Callum Walker 3  

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Translating and Interpreting ((PTTI))

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As a discipline Translation Studies (TS) has undergone a considerable number of ‘turns’ since its official genesis with Holmes’ paper on The Name and Nature of Translation Studies (1988/2004). These overlapping and loosely defined paradigms have encapsulated the shifting focus of Translation Studies over time, reflecting not only a variety of approaches to conduct translation, but also, more importantly, the diversity of ways to study translation. Starting with the linguistic turn, passing through the cultural turn in the 1980s, the interdisciplinary turn in the 1990s, and the empirical turn in the 2000s (see Snell-Hornby 2006), the 2010s has seen the focus split between the sociology of translation (Angelelli 2014), cognitive inquiries into translation (Ferreira and Schwieter 2015) and, most recently, the so-called predictive turn (Schaeffer et al. 2019). This re-orientation towards the use of data collection methods in what we have now come to refer to as Cognitive Translation Studies has tended to concentrate on the process of translation, as opposed to the product of translation. House (2013), for instance, when discussing this ‘linguistic-cognitive orientation’, mused about behavioural experiments focusing on the translation process. Other books addressing the cognitive dimensions of Translation Studies also tend to adopt the same process-oriented focus, the only exceptions being studies on the products of audiovisual translation (AVT). Back in 2006, Jean Boase-Beier was one of the first scholars to specifically mention a ‘cognitive turn’ (Boase-Beier 2020, 84ff—the notion was first mentioned in a conference paper in 2006), in part due to the rise in think-aloud studies, studies on the reading of source texts and research incorporating broader cognitive issues such as relevance theory. It is within this latter conception of ‘Cognitive Translation Studies’—drawing on the cognitive element of stylistics (and cognitive poetics) and the cognitive experience of style—that this book falls, concentrating not on the process , but on the cognitive effects of the product of translation in conjunction with the effects of the original text. This reception-oriented paradigm—for text-based translations, at least—is a truly nascent field, with only a small handful of studies as yet dedicated to studying the cognitive dimensions of written translations. As will become clear over the coming chapters, the research presented in this book draws on a variety of scholarly traditions—new and old—with a view to tying them together into a unified, yet multifaceted approach to study the experience of translated products alongside source texts.

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By way of special mention, and of particular interest to this book, an article by Ramos Pinto ( 2016 ) studying the reception of subtitled ‘standardised’ and ‘non-standardised’ language varieties mentions an eye-tracking experiment, but only addresses the qualitative data obtained from a questionnaire. At the time of writing, no follow-up article on the eye-tracking element of this study has been published. The findings from this study may yet be of interest given that the experiment focused on language varieties in translation (albeit in AVT).

Constrained writing is an umbrella term used to describe various writing constraints that are either imposed on authors or self-imposed by authors themselves for creative reasons. One example is a lipgram, which is a literary work in which a letter of the alphabet is purposely avoided. Georges Perec’s La Disparition (1969; translated as A Void in English) is written entirely without the letter e .

Page references to Bâtons, chiffres et lettres and Le Voyage en Grèce are indicated in brackets using the initialisms BCL and VG, respectively. For brevity, any mentions of these texts in the body of this book will henceforth be abbreviated to ‘ Bâtons ’ and ‘ Voyage ’. Translations from the French in both of these texts are my own and are provided without the original French for ease of understanding. For citations from Zazie dans le métro , these will be marked with the abbreviated title ‘ Zazie ’. Page numbers following quotations in French refer to Queneau’s original text in French (Queneau 1959 ) while page numbers following quotations in English refer to Barbara Wright’s English translation (Queneau 1960 ).

‘Pas mécontent de sa formule, le ptit type’ ( Zazie : 8); ‘Une paire de bloudjinnzes qu’elle a voulumfaucher, la mouflette’ ( Zazie : 57).

‘—M’autorisez-vous donc à de nouveau formuler la proposition interrogative qu’il y a quelques instants j’énonça devant vous?/—J’énonçai, dit l’obscur./—J’énonçais, dit Trouscaillon./—J’énonçai sans esse./—J’énonçai, dit enfin Trouscaillon. Ah! la grammaire c’est pas mon fort…’ ( Zazie : 167); ‘—Décidément, dit Trouscaillon, ça tourne pas rond… et tout ça à cause de la femme que je rencontra ce matin./—Que je recontrai./—Que je recontrais./—Que je recontrai sans esse./—Que je recontrai’ ( Zazie : 170).

A prime example is the following: ‘—Le con. Dis-y qu’il s’amène au bout du fil./—Charles, cria Mado Ptits-pieds (geste)./Charles ne dit rien (geste)./Mado s’impatiente (geste)’ ( Zazie : 138).

Many of the sources for these quotations are taken from the Barbara Wright archives at Lilly Library: Wright, B. mss., ca. 1930–2009, Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana. There are also other archives in France and the UK. Details are given in Roullier ( 2013 ).

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Walker, C. (2021). The Cognitive Paradigm in Translation Studies. In: An Eye-Tracking Study of Equivalent Effect in Translation. Palgrave Studies in Translating and Interpreting. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55769-0_2

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Although the professional reality of translation always involves a concrete assignment a translator has to perform, there is, surprisingly, little evidence that this fact gets reflected in translation studies, which are primarily aimed at abstracting from individual cases and obtaining a generalised picture of the translation process. This paper, by contrast, seeks to give a programmatic survey of what case studies in translation could possibly offer to translatology. It is an attempt to point out the many advantages case studies have over abstract theorising. Indeed, their findings could provide traditional translation studies with a much more solid empirical basis than what current research has at its disposal. Moreover, a study of translation cases would yield more specific results, even if at the cost of greater generality.

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Shifts of agency in translation: a case study of the Chinese translation of Wild Swans

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Volume 65, Number 1, April 2020 , p. 168–192 New Contexts in Discourse Analysis for Translation and Interpretation

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This paper calls for a reconsideration of transitivity as a useful analytical tool in descriptive translation studies, especially for the investigation of the translation of agency. Transitivity is the ensemble of lexico-grammatical resources that “represent reality in language” (Eggins 2001/2005: 206). Such choices in translation have been usefully explored by a number of translation scholars with a strong orientation towards Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), although there has not been much recent scholarly interest within the wider community of translation studies (TS), perhaps due to the perceived complexity of SFL’s analytical framework. This paper returns to transitivity analysis for its continued relevance to TS, especially for those interested in uncovering the way agency, ideology, characterization and narrative are manifested in text. This paper incorporates new linguistic methodologies of analysing transitivity in combination with additional linguistic systems of voice, theme, and modality because this combination allows for a more holistic view of transitivity. Focusing on the translation of Mao’s agency at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution in Chang’s politically volatile autobiography, Wild Swans , it has found dramatic shifts in the characterization of Mao in the Chinese translation by Pu Zhang, published in Taiwan, which alters the overall narrative. This paper proposes a categorization of equivalences and shifts of linguistic agency based on a text-based analysis, thus contributing to a more systematic categorisation of the translation of agency.

• transitivity,

Le présent article plaide en faveur d’une reconsidération de la transitivité en tant qu’outil d’analyse dans la traductologie descriptive, notamment dans la recherche sur la traduction de l’agentivité. La transitivité regroupe l’ensemble des ressources lexico-grammaticales représentant la réalité dans la langue (Eggins 2001/2005 : 206). Ces choix de traduction ont été étudiés productivement par certains chercheurs en traduction fortement influencés par la linguistique systémique fonctionnelle (LSF). Toutefois, le sujet n’a pas jusqu’à maintenant suscité beaucoup d’intérêt chez les traductologues en général, peut-être en raison de l’apparente complexité du cadre analytique de la LSF. Le présent article se consacre à l’analyse de la transitivité en raison de sa pertinence pour la traductologie, notamment pour ceux qui souhaitent étudier comment l’agentivité, l’idéologie, la caractérisation et les récits se manifestent dans les textes. Il s’appuie sur de nouvelles méthodologies linguistiques d’analyse de la transitivité ainsi que sur des systèmes linguistiques complémentaires de la voix, du thème et de la modalité, car cette combinaison offre une vision plus holistique de la transitivité. L’étude, qui se concentre sur la traduction de l’agentivité de Mao au début de la Révolution culturelle dans l’autobiographie politiquement controversée de Jung Chang, Wild Swans , a révélé des changements draconiens dans la caractérisation de Mao dans la traduction chinoise de Pu Zhang, publiée à Taiwan, qui modifient le récit global. Le présent article propose une catégorisation des équivalences et des changements de l’agentivité linguistique sur la base d’une analyse textuelle, contribuant à une catégorisation plus systématique de la traduction de l’agentivité.

Mots-clés :

• transitivité,
• agentivité,

El presente artículo propone replantear la transitividad como una herramienta de análisis útil en los estudios descriptivos de traducción, en particular para investigar la traducción de la agencia. La transitividad es el conjunto de recursos léxico-gramáticos que «representan la realidad en el lenguaje» (Eggins 2001/2005: 206). En materia de traducción, esas opciones han sido exploradas de manera fructífera por varios estudiosos de la traducción con una fuerte orientación hacia la Lingüística Sistémico-Funcional (SFL, por sus siglas en inglés); si bien recientemente no ha habido mucho interés académico en la comunidad de Estudios de Traducción en general, tal vez debido a la aparente complejidad del marco analítico de la SFL. El presente artículo retoma el análisis de la transitividad por su pertinencia para los Estudios de Traducción, especialmente para los interesados en descubrir cómo se manifiestan en el texto la agencia, la ideología, la caracterización y la narrativa. Este artículo incorpora nuevas metodologías de investigación lingüística para el análisis de la transitividad en combinación con los sistemas lingüísticos adicionales voz, tema y modalidad, ya que esta combinación permite una visión más holística de la transitividad. Centrado en la traducción de la agencia de Mao al comienzo de la Revolución Cultural en la autobiografía políticamente volátil de Chang, Wild Swans , el análisis muestra cambios significativos en la caracterización de Mao en la traducción china de Pu Zhang, publicada en Taiwán, lo que altera la narrativa general. El artículo propone una categorización de los cambios y de las equivalencias de agencia lingüística en base a un análisis textual, y contribuye a una categorización más sistemática de la traducción de la agencia.

Palabras clave:

• transitividad,

Article body

1. introduction.

Translation studies (TS) in the 1990s saw the emergence of two approaches (Munday 2001/2016: 142, 198): the cultural turn (Bassnett and Lefevere 1990; Spivak 1993/2000) and discourse analysis. Criticizing the failure of previous linguistic turns to consider translation within its cultural environment (Bassnett and Lefevere 1990), the cultural turn has generated new interest towards pertinent cultural issues, such as ideology. However, text-based scholars have criticized purely cultural approaches for their lack of rigorous research methods (Baker 1996: 9; Boyden 2008: 151; Fawcett 1995: 182) and their low potential for generalization (House 2013: 50). This paper calls for a more constructive dialogue between the two approaches. Linguistic methodologies, especially those based on systemic functional linguistics (SFL), can be an empowering tool for translation scholars to form a bridge between discourse (or a text) and its situational and cultural context. Among the various SFL systems, one that is particularly relevant to the “translation of ideology” (Hatim and Mason 1997/2005: 119) is transitivity [1] : the whole of lexico-grammatical resources that “represent reality in language” (Eggins 2001/2005: 206). Transitivity has been usefully deployed by a number of translation scholars (Mason 2003/2004; Munday 2007; Huang 2013) and notably by Calzada-Peréz (2007). The seminal work of Calzada-Peréz (2007), which inspires the present study, usefully deploys transitivity in relation to causation and voice for a corpus of European Parliament speeches and translations. However, while transitivity continues to attract new interest in discourse analysis (Chaemsaithong and Kim 2018; Dreyfus 2017; Lukin 2013), it has not drawn much recent attention in translation studies, except for Yu and Wu’s studies (2016, 2018) of the English translation of Chinese Zen Buddhist texts and Chinese government reports.

This study calls for a return to transitivity analysis as an empowering tool for descriptive translation studies, especially those with an interest in uncovering how ideology and the attribution of responsibility can be represented linguistically in translation. A key component of ideology is a differentiation of ‘us’ versus ‘them’ (Thompson 1990), by representing an event from a particular perspective and by attributing responsibilities to different characters with particular consistencies. This function in this context needs to be achieved through patterns of meaning, which must be linguistically realised chiefly through the lexicogrammatical resources of transitivity . This study deploys the transitivity system to compare the characterisation between a source text (ST) and a target text (TT) and the semantic consequences on the overall narrative. It also strives for methodological innovation by combining the standard SFL transitivity system with other semantic and lexicogrammatical systems, including voice , theme , and modality . This combination of analyses enables a better understanding of the complexity of the interactions amongst different linguistic systems that take place in interlingual translation in order to differentiate obligatory and optional translation choices.

The data for this qualitative case study comes from two chapters in Jung Chang’s politically volatile autobiography Wild Swans [2] (and its Chinese translation [3] by Pu Zhang). Using the abovementioned methodology, this paper examines the shifts of responsibility attributed to the controversial Chinese leader Mao Zedong (Chairman Mao), with a hypothesis that transitivity and related linguistic systems may have been manipulated by the TT producer(s), whether consciously or subconsciously, which results in changes in meaning that alter characterization and narrative in the translation. Based on these analyses, this paper seeks to uncover the semantic and ideological consequences of the choices made from different systems. In addition, it sets out to propose a categorisation of the equivalences and shifts in the translation of agency.

2. Transitivity and other interacting linguistic systems in Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL)

2.1. t ransitivity within the ideational metafunction.

Transitivity is “modelled as a configuration of a process, participants involved in it, and attendant circumstances” (Martin, Matthiessen, et al . 2010: 98). To put it simply, it involves how we use language to represent who does what to whom/what, where, when, how, and why (Hasan 1988: 63). A full transference of such happenings and goings-on can be considered the core of what is usually expected of translation accuracy. Thus, a translation that does not match the overall meaning of the ST created through transitivity may not be considered a translation at all; instead, it shall be considered, to borrow Bassnett and Lefevere’s (1990) term, a type of rewriting. On the other hand, minor shifts in transitivity may also have an accumulated effect which significantly alters the ideology of attributing responsibilities or blaming.

Transitivity is aligned with the representational function of language within an SFL framework. Halliday developed a tri-functional view on language based on the works of scholars such as Malinowski, Bühler, and Jakobson (Halliday and Hasan 1985: 15-17). This functional view argues that language is what it is because of the functions it must achieve in the physical and cultural environments: 1) to construe and represent human experience – the ideational metafunction, 2) to enact personal and social relationships with those around us – the interpersonal metafunction, and 3) to turn the first two metafunctions into coherent and cohesive discourse – the textual metafunction (Halliday and Hasan 1985). The three metafunctions serve as a link between language and the context outside language (Thibault 1987: 608). This functional alignment of language and its context is the reason why SFL is particularly useful in explaining translation choices within their context. Transitivity is the major lexicogrammatical system [4] within the experiential metafunction, which is one component of the ideational metafunction, alongside the logical metafunction. The basic analytical unit of lexicogrammar is the clause, which is the smallest unit onto which the three strands of meaning (ideational, interpersonal, and textual) are mapped.

Since transitivity concerns the linguistic representation of who does what to whom/what, where, when, how, and why, a clause with a full transitivity pattern can be divided into the who/whom (participant[s]), the what (process), and the where/when/how/why (circumstance), as shown in Table 1.

Functional labels in transitivity

-> See the list of tables

Transitivity can be analysed from two perspectives: an ergative model and a transitive model. On the one hand, the ergative model generalises across our experiences (Halliday and Matthiessen 2014: 334) so that only four participant roles are recognised: Agent, Medium, Beneficiary, and Range. The participant through which a process unfolds is called Medium. But in some clauses, another participant is recognised as the external cause of the process, or the Agent. A clause with a feature of agency is considered an “effective” clause in ergative terms, while one without an Agent is considered a “middle” clause. Such distinction between agentive and agentless clauses exists in both English and Chinese. Dreyfus (2017) exemplifies three types of effective clauses and one type of middle clause in English, as shown in Table 2.

Effective and middle clauses in the ergative model of English transitivity (adapted from Dreyfus 2017: 376-379)

The ergative model is more useful for analysing the shifts of agency and responsibility in translation, since the person or organisation with agency is highly likely to be represented linguistically as Agent in ergativity; otherwise, the agency would be so obscure that readers may not be able to link the character’s agency and the goings-on.

On the other hand, the complementary transitive model has been the source of the traditional distinction between transitive and intransitive verbs in English (Halliday and Matthiessen 2014: 216). In this model, a process is either confined to one participant (“intransitive” clause), or it extends from one participant to another (“transitive” clause). This paper argues that it is useful to combine the ergative analysis of agency with the transitive analysis, because the transitive model particularises the linguistic representation of human experiences, as shown in Figure 1 for English, and thus provides a more delicate framework for different types of Agent. This further differentiation depends on the type of process for which the Agent acts as an external force.

The grammar of experience: types of process in English (Halliday and Matthiessen 2014: 216)

-> See the list of figures

As shown in Figure 1, there are three main types of experiences: 1) the outer experience of doing and happening (mainly “material”), 2) the inner experience of feeling (mainly “mental”), and 3) the relationship of one experience to another (mainly “relational”). Mason (2003/2004) usefully argues that it is best to maintain the same process type to translate an experience accurately. For instance, it is generally best to translate an English material process into a Chinese material process to ensure the same experience is construed in translation, even though this is not always possible due to linguistic differences. However, a non-obligatory shift from a “material” process ( the government stabilized the economy ) into a “relational” process ( the economy was stable again ) would convey a significantly different experience by stripping the government’s agency in stabilising the economy.

The participants are labelled differently in each of the six processes depending on the grammatical relationship between the participant and the process, for example Actor in a material process and Sayer in a mental process. Likewise, Agents can be further labelled in six different ways depending on the transitive process type, as Table 3 shows below.

Participant types that are considered agentive in the ergative model (adapted from Halliday and Matthiessen 2014: 344)

2.2. Investigating characterization and narrative through transitivity

Transitivity analysis allows the different participant types of a character to be identified and labelled in the ergative or the transitive model, which contributes to a better understanding of how a character has been represented and of the overall narrative. The popular term narrative , or story, has been defined by Ewick and Silbey (1995: 198) (in Baker 2006: 19) as “a sequence of statements connected by both a temporal and a moral ordering.” A core feature of narratives is causal emplotment , which “allows us to take the same set of events and weave them into very different moral stories” (Somers 1997: 82, cited by Baker 2006: 67). Baker (2006: 70) argues that “patterns of causal emplotment can thus be subtly changed in translation through the cumulative effective of relatively minor shifts that lend a different weighting to the elements of the original narrative.” Whereas she has usefully identified a number of manifestations of casual emplotment, the obvious contribution of transitivity analyses to this aspect of translation has not been explicitly recognised.

Character has been usefully defined by Fisher (1997: 316, cited by Baker 2006) as “an organized set of actional tendencies.” As Hasan (1988: 65) argues, “…part of the basis of our perception of what a person is like derives from knowing what sort of participant roles are ascribed to that person.” Therefore, consistent shifts in the ergative and transitive roles may result in an overall change in the characterization.

2.3. Agency, voice , and theme

Agency is closely related to the grammatical systems of voice (Calzada-Peréz 2007; Dreyfus 2017), because an Agent can only appear in clauses with certain voice choices and its unmarked position in a clause is also relatively fixed depending on the voice. Viewed from the ergative perspective, two voices are recognised in English. One is the effective voice, in which an Agent extends to a Medium; it includes operative (active) and receptive (passive) voices. A clause in the receptive voice may include or omit the Agent, but the voice in both cases is nevertheless effective due to an Agent being implied by the passive verb form. The other is the middle voice, in which there is no Agent grammatically present or implied. These have been exemplified in Table 2 above. The same distinction between agentive and agentless voices has been recognised in Chinese (Halliday and McDonald 2004: 376), although it is based on different grammatical markers.

Agency is also closely related to theme (Li 2007; Kim and Matthiessen 2015), because of the interrelation between Theme choice and voice choice. Theme is the main system in the textual metafunction, and Theme is defined by Halliday and Matthiessen (2014: 89) as “the element that serves as the point of departure of the message”; whatever is considered a Theme is given textual prominence as the starting point. Then the message progresses to the non-prominent rest, which is referred to as the Rheme. On a text level, meaningful Theme choices across clauses, or thematic progression, can usefully orient the readers to follow the flow of the message in a coherent way. Thematic progression is the “successive selection of themes from one clause to another according to one of a fairly small number of motivated patterns” (Kim and Matthiessen 2015: 337-338), which mainly includes a linear pattern (or thematic reiteration), in which the same element frequently occurs as Theme, and a zig-zag pattern, in which the Rheme, or parts of it, is regularly picked up in the Theme in the following clause (Eggins 2001/2005: 324-325).

Kim and Matthiessen (2015: 341) point out that the voice system may considerably differ, even between two closely related European languages. For instance, the passive voice is more frequent in English than some other languages, such as German. Therefore, when interpreting translation shifts in theme and voice , it is important to consider typological differences in voice between the two languages, which may impose restrictions on the Theme choice in translation. On the other hand, restrictions of Theme choices in translation may also result in a preferable or inevitable change of voice.

As shown above, English has three choices within its system of voice : active, passive, and middle. According to Halliday and McDonald (2004), Chinese also has three voices, though they are different from those in English: dispositive, passive, and neutral. Dispositive, which does not have an equivalent in English, is realised using the construction 把 (bǎ), as shown in Table 4. Passive is realised using the constructions 被 (bèi) or 给 (gěi), again exemplified in Table 4. Any other voice that does not have such formal grammatical markers is considered neutral in Chinese, which could be either transitive or intransitive. Some instances of neutral transitive voice show features of agency and may appear similar to an English active voice, and the neutral intransitive voice may appear similar to the English passive, but they are nevertheless considered neutral due to the lack of an explicit grammatical marker. A main reason why the Chinese voice system has to be recognised with such explicit markers by grammarians is that Chinese verb forms do not change according to voice as do English verbs (that is, be + verb -d in English passivity).

The Chinese voice system (tabulated from Halliday and McDonald 2004: 372)

The voice systems in English and in Chinese differ not only in the structure (namely, an Agent generally precedes the process in the Chinese passive bèi or gěi structure, but follows the process in English passivity), but also in the interpersonal meaning: a passive structure in spoken Chinese is semantically loaded with an undesirable feature, although such a negative connotation may not apply in the formal written register (Halliday and McDonald 2004). Hence, it is likely that an English passive structure with positive connotation may be translated into an active voice in Chinese to avoid the negative connotation in the spoken mode.

The three systems of agency , voice , and theme are interrelated, because a change in voice (that is, from active to passive) typically results in a change in Theme and the position or even the presence of the Agent, as exemplified in Table 5.

Interrelation amongst agency , voice , and theme

This interrelation raises one implication for TS: change in voice in translation may be motivated either by a stylistic need to ensure a smooth thematic progression (that is, to consistently select the pot as the point of departure) or by ideological reasons to vary the attribution of responsibility to an Actor (the one who broke the pot).

2.4. Cline of responsibility

Based on the combinatorial analysis of agency , voice , and theme , Dreyfus (2017) proposes a cline of responsibility in English, as shown in Figure 2.

Cline of responsibility (Dreyfus 2017: 379)

Using this cline, Dreyfus (2017) shows that even her three-year-old son was capable of manipulating transitivity resources to construe the same reality, but one which minimises any responsibility attributed to himself as the do-er by saying The pot broke . Although the active voice and the passive voice (with Agent) both explicitly assign responsibility to the do-er, Dreyfus (2017) further argues that the active voice assigns higher responsibility by placing the do-er I in the initial, thematic position in the clause, therefore foregrounding the agentive role with textual prominence. In comparison, the agency of the do-er can only be inferred in the agentless passive voice, as it is not explicitly represented. Further down the cline, the middle voice completely leaves out any responsibility as if the pot broke inevitably, without any external force. In the case of Dreyfus’s three-year-old son, she argues that he chose the middle voice for ideological reasons, that is, to minimise his role in the breaking of the pot. Correspondingly, Dreyfus shows that her son chose the active voice when he wanted to foreground his role in events, such as when he built a train ( I made a train ).

It is hereby argued that both the dispositive voice and the neutral transitive voice in their unmarked forms [5] are agentive and equivalent to the English active voice in maximising responsibility, and the Chinese intransitive neutral voice is the equivalent of the English middle voice in minimising responsibility. Taking into consideration the typological differences, it is hereby proposed that Dreyfus’s (2017: 379) cline of responsibility can be adapted as shown in Figure 3 for a cross-linguistic comparison of the cline of responsibility between English and Chinese based on Theme choice and voice.

The application of Dreyfus’s cline of responsibility to Chinese

2.5. Agency and tense/modality

While agency can be enhanced or weakened through shifts in voice, it should also be seen as being diminished when an agentive process shows modality markers or non-finite predicators, both of which add an irrealis sense that the agency is not actually exercised (Butt 2008: 76-77). In Figure 4, the agency of he in destroying people must be seen as being the most realis in the clause with the primary past tense destroyed , showing it was an actual past event, and the second agency, marked by modality would , is lower as it is only an expression of his inclination to exercise agency. The clause with a non-finite predicator shows the lowest level of agency, as it only conveys a hypothetical condition.

A cline of finiteness in representing agency

Again, linguistic differences between a source language and a target language may have implications on examining the finiteness of agency in translation. For instance, since Chinese does not have a grammaticalized system of tense , only a partial comparison between English and Chinese, based on modality markers, is possible when it comes to agency in relation to finiteness. The differentiation between actualised and unactualised in Chinese will be based on whether a clause contains a modality marker such as would .

3. Data and methodology

3.1. jung chang’s wild swans.

This paper sets out to compare the representations of Mao Zedong at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution in 1965-1966 in Jung Chang’s politically charged English-language autobiography Wild Swans and its Chinese translation published in Taiwan. The ST represents, to date, the summit of success ever achieved by a contemporary Chinese writer in the English language. Initially published in 1991, it went on to sell over 15 million copies in 37 languages as of 2018. [6] The ST was initially published in 1991, two years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Tiananmen Square Incident, both in 1989. At the time, the dissolution of the Soviet Union marked the official victory of U.S.-led NATO in the Cold War. This publication was timely so as to capture the keen Western interest in life under China’s communist regime. Despite its commercial success, Wild Swans has attracted a number of criticisms for its interpretation of Chinese history and the overwhelmingly negative portrayal of Mao (Chun 1992; Gao 1993; Gao 2002; Goodman 2006; McDougall 2014). For example, McDougall (2014: 57) comments that the success of Wild Swans “reinforces the impression that English-language readers welcome or at least don’t object to books that are critical of contemporary China.” Carrying this monstrous representation of Mao in Wild Swans further, Jung Chang and her Irish historian husband Jon Halliday published a biography of Mao in 2005, Mao: The Unknown Story , which has also attracted criticism from academics (Benton and Chun 2013; Goodman 2006) for its unbalanced representation of Mao.

Wild Swans was translated into Chinese by Chang’s brother, Pu Zhang [7] , who is not a professional translator but rather a London-based Chinese language writer. As the ST author’s brother, he is a represented character in the autobiography. It is unclear why Chang did not translate the book herself, since she has subsequently demonstrated her translation ability by translating two of her later biographies, on Mao and on Empress Dowager Cixi, into Chinese. Nevertheless, Chang has personally contributed to the decision-making in translating Wild Swans , suggesting that she approves of the Chinese language edition. Also, the translator’s proximity to the ST author and his role as a represented character may have given him unusual liberty in translating the book, something ordinary translators could not afford to do.

The Chinese translation was published in Taiwan, which is claimed to harbour one of the freest media environments in Asia. [8] The time gap between the ST (1991) and TT (1992) is minimal, although the TT context is marked by the thawing of Cross-Strait relations since 1979. The years 1991 and 1992 saw the adoption of the 國家統一綱領 (Guójiā tǒngyī gānglǐng) [Guidelines for National Unification] [9] in Taiwan and the so-called 九二共識 (Jiǔ’èr gòngshì) [1992 Consensus], both of which supported the concept of “One China” and were welcome by Beijing.

This qualitative study mainly focuses on chapters 15 and 16 of Wild Swans , which portrays the beginning of the Cultural Revolution (1965-1966); three examples from other chapters are included (in Table 3 and in Section 4.3.1) when a suitable example is unavailable in the two selected chapters. Prior to the Cultural Revolution, the 大躍進 (Dà yuèjìn) [Great Leap Forward] (1958-1961) had resulted in a great, 3-year famine. China had also suffered through internal fights against class enemies and through numerous other political campaigns in the name of preparing for wars against the U.S., Taiwan, and the USSR. This desperate desire to catch up with developed countries and to prepare for war was influenced by volatile global politics. The Cold War peaked in 1962 with the Cuban Missile Crisis. With the Sino-Soviet Split as of 1960, there were conceivable threats to China from both America and the USSR. On the one hand, Sino-Soviet relations remained sour after Mao criticized Khrushchev’s call for de-Stalinisation in 1958. On the other hand, the arrival of U.S. troops in Vietnam in 1965 created an immediate threat.

The two chosen chapters describe Mao launching the Cultural Revolution against capitalist roaders (people who sought to push China towards a capitalist road) and “bourgeois intellectuals” such as scholars and teachers. He did so with the assistance of officials such as the Gang of Four, but also by encouraging the Red Guards and young students to rebel. The ST author, Chang, was around 13 or 14 at the time, a privileged student in Chengdu whose father was the director of Public Affairs of the province of Sichuan (Chang 1991/2003). The beginning of the Cultural Revolution impacted China as a whole, including the author’s family.

The two chapters are considered suitable and unique materials for a study of agency in translation. In these chapters, the author explores the reasons why Mao launched the Revolution and how the youth were mobilised to wreak havoc. Thus, frequent linguistic attributions of responsibility are to be expected in both the ST and the TT. The size of the parallel corpus is shown in Table 6.

Sources and sizes of the ST and TT in the present study [10]

3.2 Data analysis

The representation of Mao is firstly explored impressionistically throughout the whole book and subsequently analysed through detailed transitivity analysis in the two selected chapters. All clauses in which Mao and other characters are represented as a participant in the chosen chapters were exported to an Excel sheet for a close analysis of the process type, transitive participant role, ergative role, modality marker, and voice . Instances were then compared between the ST and the TT to identify and categorise any equivalences and shifts in terms of the linguistic representation of agency. See for instance Example 1, whose analysis is carried out in Table 7.

An example of variables in data analysis

All analyses were revisited several times to keep errors to a minimum. Instances that were ambiguous in process or participant types were discussed with colleagues in SFL.

These variables also allow for further quantitative analyses (Li and Li 2020) and qualitative analyses to compare the shifts of responsibilities amongst different characters in the translation. Within the scope of this study, the focus will be the translation of Mao’s agency through qualitative discussions of some typical shifts and equivalences in the translation.

4. The translation of agency: equivalences and shifts

4.1. the overall shifts of the representation of mao in translation.

An impressionistic reading of the full English ST shows that Mao Zedong is characterized as:

an almost exclusively negative character;

an emperor-like dictator exercising absolute authority;

one who could not take the slightest criticism;

a firm believer in violence and human struggle as being necessary for social development.

The representation of Mao in Wild Swans is almost completely negative. In addition, when describing negative consequences of policies and campaigns related to Mao, his agency is usually made explicit: for example, Mao let this happen in order to… (Chang 1991/2003: 363). To hold Mao more accountable, Mao’s mental activities are extensively explored. The mental activities are then represented as having turned into his action/speech, which subsequently led to the drastic and disastrous changes that swept across China. Those changes in turn had a direct impact on the Chang household. A narrative pattern has been frequently found to trace tragedies in the author’s family directly back to Mao’s mind: Mao “felt threatened” (Chang 1991/2003: 348)… therefore he started a witch-hunt (Chang 1991/2003: 348-349); “Mao’s vague battle calls threw the population and the majority of Party officials into profound confusion” (Chang 1991/2003: 350); Chang’s parents (party officials) were overwhelmed by apprehension (Chang 1991/2003: 350); Red Guards group sprang up around the country (Chang 1991/2003: 359); Chang’s father fell victim to the rage of the Red Guards (Chang 1991/2003: 382-384); Chang became “fearful and confused” (Chang 1991/2003: 385).

The Chinese TT shows significant quantitative shifts in the representation of Mao. A dramatic 77% reduction has been found (Li and Li 2020) in the number of instances of Mao being represented as a participant in the Chinese TT, from 153 to 77 in the same two chapters. Mao’s agentive roles have also been reduced from 37 instances to merely 20. This decrease in Mao’s overall representation and agency is foregrounded against an increasing trend of the overall representation and agency of the author’s peers – the youth of the day who committed the bulk of the actual violence during the Cultural Revolution. The following subsections will discuss the equivalences and shifts in translating Mao’s agentive roles in the Chinese TT.

4.2. Equivalence in the translation of agency

An instance of the translation of agency is considered an equivalence in this paper at the lexicogrammatical stratum when the character has been translated into the same participant at an equivalent level on the cline of responsibility in Figure 5. This almost inevitably requires the same process to be maintained. There are a number of instances in the data where the equivalence of Mao’s agency has been achieved on a clause level. For instance, in the example in Table 7 above, Mao’s agency as an Actor in “using” animate goals – the young students of the day – to incite violence has been translated as 是利用 (shì lìyòng) [be using], which represents an equivalent level of agency of acting on animate goals. As shown in Figure 5, the Chinese neutral voice (transitive) is considered one of the two equivalences of the English active voice. The elliptical 他 (tā) [he] in the Chinese clause does not affect Mao’s agency since it is recoverable from the one in the immediately preceding clause, 他也不特別喜歡或信任他的小紅衛兵 (Tā yě bú tèbié xǐhuān huò xìnrèn tā de xiǎo hóngwèibīng) [He also did not particularly like or trust his young red guards]. A distinction should be made between an agentless passive, in which an Agent is implied but not grammatically recoverable, and the operative voice, in which the Agent is recoverable grammatically. Elliptical reference is common in Chinese (Halliday and McDonald 2004; Hu 1994).

This equivalence in translating Mao’s agency may appear as common-sense to translators. However, there are potential alternative translation techniques that would reduce Mao’s agency, as shown in Table 8. This shift of Mao from an agentive Actor to an agentless Senser would lead to an omission of Mao’s role as an Actor.

An alternative translation technique

Similar lexicogrammatical equivalences in translating Mao’s other agentive roles, such as Initiator (+ Animate Goal) and Sayer (targeting), have also been found, as listed in Table 9, based on Example 2.

An example of an equivalence in translating Mao’s agentive Initiator role

In Table 9, Mao’s highly agentive role in initiating the population to act is translated as an equivalent Initiator role in Chinese. The translation also shows explicitation of this initiation as a verbal process in the additional embedded clause 按他說的 (àn tā shuō de) [as he said], which may have been influenced by a need for fluency in Chinese in translating the initiating process get…to act .

Example 3, analysed in Table 10, also shows how Mao’s agency as a Sayer is maintained in the translation.

An example of an equivalence in translating Mao’s agentive Sayer role

Sayer (targeting) is the only instance of Sayer being recognised as an Agent lexicogrammatically (Halliday and Matthiessen 2014: 207), as if the Sayer is verbally acting on the listener by means of criticism or praise. In Table 10, Mao’s agentive Sayer role has been translated as an equivalent agentive Sayer in the neutral (transitive) voice in Chinese.

4.3. Shifts in the translation of agency

While many lexicogrammatical equivalences of Mao’s agency have been maintained in the chosen translation, more shifts have been identified. In the Chinese translation of Wild Swans , the overall quantitative trend is to reduce, and at times, omit Mao’s agentive roles. Therefore, this section will focus on examples where Mao’s agency has either been diminished or omitted lexicogrammatically. While there may also be isolated examples of translation shifts where Mao’s agentive role has been enhanced or even added in the Chinese translation, they will not be discussed in this paper, as they have not been identified in the chosen chapters nor do they represent the overall quantitative shifts.

4.3.1. Reduction of agency through the change of voice and Theme

Table 11 below shows an example of a reduction of Mao’s agency by changing both the voice and Theme choice.

An example of reduced agency through shifts in voice and Theme choice

Although the TT represents the same experience and maintains Mao’s agentive role as an Actor that has created changes to the abstract Goal of 解放 (jiěfàng)[rehabilitation] readers may notice that the TT places Mao not in a thematic position as does the ST, but in the middle of the clause, after the Theme 大規模「解放」 (dà guīmó ‘jiěfàng’) [the mass-scale rehabilitation] and before 批准 (pīzhǔn) [approve]. This reflects a grammatical shift in voice. While the voice is active in English, the Chinese clause is a textually motivated variant of the neutral voice according to Halliday and McDonald (2014), due to its lack of a formal marker of the dispositive or passive voice and due to the Goal being placed in the thematic position. This variation attributes less responsibility to Mao by not foregrounding his agency at the thematic position. However, it is unclear whether the change of voice is the driving force or a consequence of the Theme change. Therefore, it becomes necessary to compare the thematic progression in the ST and the TT. The three preceding clauses and one following clause have been extracted to compare the thematic progression in the ST, as shown in Figure 5, and in the TT, as shown in Figure 6.

Thematic progression in the ST (Chang 1991/2003: 583)

Amongst the four English clauses, two lines of smooth thematic progression can be identified. One line of a zig-zag progression can be drawn from the Rheme of Clause 1 to the Topical Theme of Clauses 2. One line of a linear pattern can be drawn between the topical Themes of Clauses 3 and 4. However, the Theme choice of Mao in Clause 3 is foregrounded as it cannot be traced back to either the Theme or Rheme of any previous clauses here, creating a gap in thematic progression, which may draw the reader’s attention to this abrupt Theme choice. At the same time, the ST uses the active voice, which attributes maximum responsibility to Mao according to Dreyfus’s cline.

The thematic progression in the TT has been visualized in Figure 6 below.

Thematic progression in the TT (Chang 1992/2006, translated by Pu Zhang: 399)

In comparison, the Chinese TT shows smoother thematic progression, with three lines of smooth progression identified amongst the four clauses. The main difference is that the Theme in Clause 3, 大規模「解放」 (dà guīmó ‘jiěfàng’) [the mass-scale “rehabilitation”] is linked to the Rheme 像大多數走資派那樣平反「解放」 (xiàng dà duōshù zǒuzīpài nàyàng píngfǎn ‘jiěfàng’) [rehabilitated like the vast majority of the capitalist-roaders] in Clause 2, which bridges the gap created in the Theme progression in the ST by changing the active voice into a textually motivated neutral voice. Thus, one may reasonably argue that this shift in voice may have been motivated by the translator’s intention to create a smooth thematic development, although it is important to note that this shift is by no means mandatory, and that a similar progression with a marked Theme 毛 (máo) [Mao] would be possible in the Chinese translation. However, a semantic consequence of this shift is the loss of the foregrounding effect of an unexpected thematic position of Mao’s agentive role and subsequently diminished responsibility attributed to him. This consequence remains valid regardless of whether the translator has failed to grasp the subtlety of the foregrounding effect, or whether he has made a deliberate choice to ‘back-stage’ Mao’s agency. The second scenario appears to be more in line with the dramatic overall quantitative trend to represent Mao less and as being less agentive in the Chinese translation.

This example echoes Baker’s (1992/2011) view that Theme choices are highly meaningful in translation, and that of Kim and Matthiessen (2015) that Theme choices may interact with voice. However, it demonstrates how optional shifts in Theme, induced by the change of voice, can lead to diminished agency of a represented participant.

4.3.2. Omission of agency in translation

The next category of translation shifts is the omission of agency. This could take the form of minor omission through representing the same experience but using either an agentive passive or middle voice, which does not represent external agency, or major omission of an entire experience in which agency is featured.

4.3.2.1 Omission of agency through agentive passive and middle voice (implicitation of agency)

Dreyfus (2017: 378) argues that agentive passives attribute little responsibility to an Agent, because it is not mentioned even though it is implied, and that middle voices attribute the “least or no responsibility.” Whereas there is certainly grammatical potential in Chinese for an agentive passive, no examples have been found in the chosen data. However, translation shifts from the English active voice to the intransitive neutral voice in Chinese have been found, as shown in Examples 5 and 6, analysed in Tables 12 and 13, respectively.

An example of a shift in voice in translation

The Chinese translation here shows an intransitive neutral voice, as if the Cultural Revolution Authority created itself without any external force. Although one may argue that Mao’s role in setting up this authority can be inferred in the co-text, his agency is omitted lexicogrammatically in this clause. It is argued that this is an example of an implicitation of Mao’s agency in translation.

The following example, analysed in Table 13, shows a similar trend of implicitation of Mao’s agency in Chinese:

An example of an implicitation of Mao’s agency

The translation shows added experience that does not derive from the ST, such as the printing date, Madame Mao’s role, and additional detail about the writer of the article, reaffirming the nature of the Chinese translation as a form of rewriting. However, the shift under interest is the change of voice from the English active voice to the intransitive neutral voice in Chinese, removing Mao’s agentive role in initiating the printing in Shanghai. Again, Mao’s agency can be semantically inferred from the co-text. Since he arranged for his wife to find a writer, he should have a vested interest in getting the article printed. However, his agency is not represented in the clause. Hence, this shift also exemplifies the implicitation of Mao’s agency in the Chinese TT.

4.3.2.2. Complete omission of an Agent-induced experience

At the other end of the cline of the reduction of Mao’s agency in translation, one finds complete omissions of ST clauses or even clause complexes in which Mao is represented lexicogrammatically as an Agent. Although such forms of omission can be considered a major violation of translation accuracy, which ordinary translators dare not deliberately commit, it has been frequently found in the present translation, especially in relation to Mao’s role.

For instance, two clauses, which follow If he was to get the population to act , within the same clause complex, have been omitted in their entirety in the Chinese TT, as shown in Example 7, analysed in Table 14.

An example of an omission of Mao’s irrealis agency

The second and the third clause, in which Mao was represented as an agent, have both been omitted, whereas the first clause forms a new clause complex with a different clause in the TT. Likewise, the clause complex in Table 15 below, which contains a clause with Mao’s agency, has been omitted in the TT it its entirety.

Another example of an omission of Mao’s irrealis agency

Mao’s agency in both examples above is made irrealis by being marked either by modality would have to or by non-finiteness to . This means Mao’s represented agency here is not actual but hypothetical, in the sense that the agency was what Mao was obliged, or desired, to exercise. Since the agency is irrealis, it could not be objectively observed. Thus, it is argued that this is the ST author’s subjective interpretation and speculation of Mao’s mental activities and Chinese history. The omission of many more such examples of Mao’s irrealis agency is coupled with the finding of Li and Li (2020) that Mao’s role as a Senser is significantly reduced in the Chinese TT. Together they reflect a general tendency in the Chinese translation to not provide interpretation of why Mao exercised agency, but to focus more on his agency that can be reported on and verified more objectively.

4.4. Summary of findings

The discussion above categorises linguistic equivalences and shifts in the translation of Mao’s agency, as shown in Figure 7.

Categorisation of the translation of agency in the present translation

Equivalences can be achieved through maintaining equivalences in the character’s participant type, the process type, voice, and Theme in the same clause. While there is a number of such equivalences, more shifts have been identified in the selected corpora, including the change of the active voice to a transitive or intransitive neutral voice in Chinese, and even to complete omissions of clauses, all of which result in an overall reduction, implicitation, and even omission of Mao’s agency in the Chinese TT. Examples of complete omissions are found to occur particularly where Mao’s mental activities and irrealis agency were being speculated in the ST. This shows a clear tendency in the Chinese translation to offer a non-compliant reading of the English source text, reducing the overall representation of Mao and his agency but also placing him in a less central and foregrounded position in the narrative of the Chinese translation. Mao is a major character in the ST who is frequently and explicitly held responsible for the tragedies suffered in China and in the author’s household. In stark contrast, he is a minor character in the Chinese translation who is only at times, and often implicitly, held accountable for the unfolding events in the narrative. This shift in characterisation, especially the implicitation of Mao’s responsibility in the Chinese translation, is highly foregrounded considering the hypothesis that translation generally shows a trend of explicitation. In fact, the agency of some other characters, such as the Red Guards, have been explicitated. The two different narratives reflect a deviation in the Chinese translation from the keener interests towards and higher tolerance for criticisms of Mao in the English-speaking context when targeting the Taiwan context.

Another main finding is the intricate interrelation amongst the systems of agency , voice , and theme . This paper echoes the relevant literature in Theme choices in translation that a shift in voice, which may enhance or diminish agency, may be motivated primarily by the need for smooth thematic development. However, it also shows an interesting example of the removal of a textually foregrounding Theme choice in the ST, which results in a plainer translation that draws less attention to Mao’s responsibility. Patterns of such translation choices, whether consciously or unconsciously made, can have semantic and ideological consequences in altering the attribution of responsibility.

5. Conclusion

This paper has built on existing literature in transitivity and theme in translation and discourse analysis. In particular, it adopts Dreyfus’s (2017) cline of responsibility to propose a category of equivalences and shifts in the linguistic realisation of agency in English-Chinese translation, taking into account typological differences between English and Chinese. It also takes into explicit consideration the linguistic systems that may interact with transitivity , including theme , voice , and modality, to differentiate translation shifts that can be considered motivated from those that may be considered mandatory due to the constraints of other linguistic systems. The examples under discussion have usefully demonstrated how localised shifts in transitivity can build up significant overall shifts in the representation of the agency of a character, which alters the characterization and the overall narrative. The proposed category in Figure 7 may be extended to investigate the translation of agency in other text types, language pairs, and directions.

A limitation of this study is a lack of interviews with the producers of the ST and TT. Although the translation process may be inferred based on text analysis, this paper does not claim concrete insights into the process, as no interview has been accorded so far. Rather, it has categorised and discussed equivalences and shifts in agency based on textual evidence and it has discussed the repercussions of transitivity choices on the function, ideology, and narrative of the translation. Regardless of the process and motivation, patterns of meaning created through localised lexicogrammatical choices in translation have semantic and even ideological consequences.

It is hoped that this study will spark more interest in discourse analysis approaches to translation studies, especially that it will foster the consideration of transitivity analysis as a useful tool for the study of agency, characterization, and narratives in different text types and language-pairs. Another aim of this study is to reiterate the importance of typological differences in any text-based study of interlingual translation.

Acknowledgements

I am indebted to Dr. Canzhong Wu, A/Professor David G. Butt, and Dr. Shoshana Dreyfus for commenting on various drafts of this article. Special thanks as well to the editors and the two anonymous reviewers for their suggestions, which helped to improve this article.

Following SFL conventions, the names of linguistic systems are written in capital letters (for example, the system of theme ), whereas the names of structural functions are written with an initial capital (for instance, Theme and Rheme).

Chang , Jung (1991/2003): Wild Swans – Three Daughters of China . New York: Touchstone.

Chang , Jung (1992/2006): 鴻——三代中國女人的故事 [Wild Swans – Three Daughters of China]. (Translated from English by Pu Zhang) Taipei: Heliopolis/Clio Culture.

Lexicogammar is thus termed (lexis + grammar) because lexis and grammar are not two separate phenomena but rather two views of the same phenomenon, with certain systems being more grammaticalized (namely tense in English) and others more lexicalised (such as gender markers in English naming). In SFL, language is organised into several strata, from semantics (meaning), to lexicogrammar, and to phonology and phonetics, all of which are embedded within its context of situation and culture. The higher strata drive, and are realised by, the lower strata. For example, a context of translation is realised through meaning, which is realised through the lexis and grammar of a language and other semiotic systems, which is then materialised through expression, such as sounds and graphics. With a relationship of realisation, it is common-practice to study meaning through lexicogrammar in SFL (Kim 2009).

For marked forms of the neutral transitive voice, see Clause 3 in Figure 6 of this paper.

Jung Chang (Last update: 17 October 2019): Consulted on 10 March 2020, < http://www.jungchang.net >.

Zhang and Chang are a romanisation of the same character 張.

Freedom House (Last update: 25 March 2020): Freedom in the World 2020: Taiwan. Freedom House . Consulted on 30 March 2020, < https://freedomhouse.org/country/taiwan/freedom-world/2020 >.

National Unification Council (23 February 1991): 國家統一綱領 (Guójiā Tǒngyī Gānglǐng) [Guidelines for National Unification]. Taiwan: Republic of China. Consulted on 10 March 2020, < http://www.mac.gov.tw/big5/rpir/2nda_3.htm >.

This is estimated based on McEnery and Xiao’s (2003-2008) rough guideline of a ratio of 1:1.6 words to characters in Chinese.

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Case-Based Learning in Translational Biomedical Research Education Provides More Realistic and Adaptive Skills for Early-Career Scientists Than Didactic Sessions

Alexandra j. greenberg-worisek.

epidemiology, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota.

Katherine A. Campbell

molecular pharmacology and experimental therapeutics, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota.

Eric W. Klee

biomedical informatics, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota.

Nathan P. Staff

neurology, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota.

Lisa A. Schimmenti

pediatrics, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota.

Karen M. Weavers

research operations, Center for Clinical and Translational Science, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota.

Stephen C. Ekker

biochemistry and molecular biology, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota.

Anthony J. Windebank

Associated data.

Case-based learning is an established means of educating students in law, business, and medicine; however, this methodology is not often applied to educating translational biomedical researchers. The application of case-based learning to translational biomedical research education allows scholars to actively engage with real-world material and apply their newfound knowledge as it is acquired.

Through the Mayo Clinic Center for Clinical and Translational Science (CCaTS), three courses were delivered in 2009–2017 which emphasized case-based learning in clinical and translational science, entrepreneurship, and individualized medicine. Quantitative measures collected in student course reviews upon course completion were analyzed. Additionally, products arising from each course were identified, including publications and startups pitched.

Analyses demonstrate that case-based learning techniques are well suited to graduate biomedical research education. Furthermore, case studies can be employed throughout the entire clinical and translational spectrum, from basic and preclinical work through to clinical and population-based learning.

Within CCaTS, next steps include creating case-based courses in regulatory and team science to continue to allow scholars to learn and apply these critical skills to real-world material. The goal is to continue to provide immersive training opportunities in areas of clinical and translational science that cannot be readily learned in a traditional lecture-based class setting.

Biomedical research attracts students and faculty who are innately curious and thrive on hands-on learning. Traditionally the majority of didactic training is conducted using lecture-based delivery methods involving a faculty member at the front of the hall and students passively taking in knowledge. Although such training has been employed for generations in medical school classrooms and in the training of other health care professions for which there is a clearly outlined, proscribed program of study, lecture-based learning is not ideal for those in highly tailored biomedical research training programs. In the field of clinical and translational science, the use of the lecture-based format is antithetical to the objectives of the training programs, in which students are encouraged to apply their newfound knowledge in “real time” to better facilitate safe, evidence-based, and rapid translation of biomedical discoveries into clinical use. With this in mind, the Mayo Clinic Center for Clinical and Translational Science (CCaTS) has designed key courses that utilize case-based learning methodologies to address this challenge. The curriculum delivered through CCaTS targets a diverse group of learners across predoctoral, master’s, and certificate programs; learners earn the associated degrees and certificates in Clinical and Translational Science from CCaTS and/or Mayo Clinic Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, depending on where the broader program is housed. The objectives of these programs vary as to level of mastery, but all aim to equip investigators and clinicians to actively participate in translational biomedical research across the clinical and translational spectrum. Scholars include recent undergraduates, medical students, postdoctoral fellows, and established clinicians and scientists. The purpose of this report is to describe how case-based learning methods have been used in three different courses in the Mayo Clinic CCaTS to better equip scholars to apply content to their personal areas of research to improve human health.

Though there are many definitions of a “case study” in the educational context, the general consensus is that a case study allows trainees to critically analyze an event, topic, or issue through a multi- or transdisciplinary lens. 2 The use of case studies is not novel in graduate education in the fields of law, business, public policy, and clinical medicine, but their use is novel in biomedical research education.

Course 1: Case Studies in Translation

The first course established in our series was “Case Studies in Translation,” which is required for CCaTS predoctoral students and an elective option for scholars in other programs. This course was first delivered in 2009, and has been delivered annually since that time. Classes meet weekly for two hours at a time throughout one academic quarter for blended presentation and discussion. The primary aim of this course is to explore the process by which discoveries and inventions move from first discovery in the laboratory to widespread use in clinical care and public health. While it takes an average of 17 years for a new discovery or innovation to be used in routine patient care, this can vary greatly based on the scientific and sociopolitical forces surrounding the discovery. 5 To that end, “Case Studies in Translation” was created to provide trainees the opportunity to investigate and critically evaluate selected cases, identify relevant social and political factors that influenced the speed of translation in these cases, and to create a definition of “successful” clinical translation ( Table 1 ).

Characteristics of Courses Delivered Through the Mayo Clinic Center for Clinical and Translational Sciences Using Case-Based Methods, 2009–2017

“Case Studies in Translation” is delivered in a blended format of in-person presentations and discussion and online readings and assessments. During the course, each student is assigned a case study to research, develop, and present from initial discovery or invention through to clinical adoption. Cases are representative of as broad a spectrum of translated discoveries and inventions as possible, including drugs, devices, in vitro diagnostics, and biologics. Although some cases are repeated from one year to the next, the majority are chosen as current examples based on recent scientific developments.

Assigned topics are purposefully outside the expertise of the student presenter. This encourages presenters to think critically about the science in the context of translation and to push them to learn how to evaluate the translational barriers and facilitators. Additionally, each student is paired with a faculty content expert for the case. The student can work with the faculty expert to develop their project. We were able to identify within our institution faculty partners representing the broad array of expertise needed to deliver these courses. These content experts attend the student presentations to assist with questions that arise during the class session. Although the assigned student presentations provide a scaffold for the class session, the course and content are heavily driven by student interest and discussion.

Course 2: Case Studies in Entrepreneurship

The second course is “Case Studies in Entrepreneurship” ( Table 1 ). Modeled after the National Science Foundation’s Innovation Corps (I-Corps) Programs, 6 “Case Studies in Entrepreneurship” aims to teach students to identify potential product ideas based on their academic research and to employ valuable entrepreneurship skills, including creation of a business canvas and customer discovery. This course serves as an elective for scholars in the certificate, master’s, and predoctoral programs. Although this course employs some case-based learning techniques, including examination of exemplar cases, the primary focus is on learning through development of biotech startup ideas and pitches in small-group settings; that is, the students’ ideas ultimately serve as case studies themselves as they present and discuss them with their colleagues. Regardless of whether the final startup pitches are successful, the course aims to foster entrepreneurial mindsets among budding scientists and clinicians.

This course relies on a blended format involving in-class discussion, group work, and out-of-class experiences. Class meets each week for one hour throughout an academic quarter, with additional meetings scheduled as needed outside of class for additional immersion experiences. These experiences involve customer interviews and two immersion experiences with entrepreneurs outside of Mayo Clinic. The first immersion experience occurs early in the course, and is designed as a “field trip” to give participants an understanding of real-world entrepreneurship and to begin to build their network. The second immersion experience is selected later on, once students have identified any “missing pieces” in their business canvas and/or pitches. Specific group assignments include the development of a business canvas to assess key partners, activities, and resources; value propositions; customer relationships and segments; cost structure and revenue stream; and distribution channels. Final group projects include a 120-second business pitch in the qualifying round of “Walleye Tank,” a Minnesota Biotech Business Pitch Competition in the style of the popular television show “Shark Tank,” and a formal application to the Minnesota Cup business accelerator.

Course 3: Case Studies in Precision Medicine

The newest course in the case studies series is “Case Studies in Precision Medicine.” This course also serves as an elective for scholars in the certificate, master’s, and predoctoral programs. The course is predicated on the fact that the use of whole exome sequencing (WES) to achieve a diagnosis in a patient with an undiagnosed disease is an important skillset for both clinicians and investigators. Interpretation of genomic data is highly complex and requires a unique series of clinical and bioinformatics steps to identify putatively causal genomic variation.

Each student is assigned a “medical mystery” case at the start of the course, which includes phenotypic and raw WES sequencing data and/or first-degree relative genomic data. Students are led stepwise through the analysis of their sequence data over each week of the course, allowing real-time development and application of genomic bioinformatics skills. Students work independently on various portions of the analyses, but they are also expected to share results and collaborate to come to a consensus regarding diagnosis.

Course delivery is a blend of didactic lectures and hands-on workshop sessions delivered throughout one academic quarter, with two one-hour classes per week. Students are also exposed to Mayo Clinic’s Center for Individualized Medicine “Genomic Odyssey Board” by attending two meetings. The Genomic Odyssey Board is a multi-disciplinary team of physicians, genetic counselors, laboratory-based geneticists, bioinformaticists, and bioethicists that meets weekly to discuss cases where WES has been performed. At the meeting, the patient’s results are reviewed at a level of detail that exceeds what is provided on the clinical report, enabling the board to discuss the findings and render an opinion on whether the reported results are likely pathogenic for each patient. By the end of the course, students have performed a phenotypic analysis, used bioinformatics tools to mine existing databases for genes already associated with the identified phenotype(s), performed an analyses of the WES data for potentially disease-causing gene variants in the genes previously identified, and conducted an analysis to look for autosomal dominant de novo or recessive genes which may be associated with the patient’s condition.

Results of course satisfaction surveys ( Supplemental Digital Appendix 1 ) collected over the past five course administrations (2013–2017) indicate overwhelmingly positive experiences in the class (response rate: 37/52, 71.2%). This course survey is administered within a week of completion of the course for all courses in CCaTS. Across nine years of course deliveries, all participants indicated that they “somewhat agreed,” “agreed,” or “strongly agreed” that the “course assignments were worth doing.” Similarly, all respondents “agreed” or “strongly agreed” that the course was “well integrated” and that “discussion was well facilitated.” Over the past five years of course delivery, 94% of 36 students who responded to the survey gave the course a grade of A. Many wrote positive comments, including “Easily my favorite CCaTS course. Really pushed me out of my comfort zone,” and “A real eye-opener into the workings of the [Food and Drug Administration], lobbying, patient care, and clinical trials.”

In addition to student feedback, students are given the opportunity to further develop their presentation into a commentary or letter to the editor for journal submission. Several students have taken advantage of this opportunity, with 5 publications over as many years, including several in The Journal of Clinical and Translational Science and one in Science Translational Medicine ( Table 1 ). 7 – 9

Of the 23 students who responded to the course satisfaction survey delivered after completion of the class, all responded that they “agreed” or “strongly agreed” that the “course assignments were worth doing”; 60.5% (23/38) “agreed” or “strongly agreed” that the course was “well worth the effort”. Although the feedback in these structured assessments was overwhelmingly positive, student outcomes that truly speak to the success of the course are the progress each group has made towards making their startup biotech company a reality. Several teams’ pitches have made headway over the past year. This has included initiating IRB-approved clinical testing and validation, identifying external partners and CEOs for launches, and further developing business models and products. Notable student business start-ups are listed in Table 1 ; video footage of some of the students’ final pitches can be found at www.walleyetank.com .

This new case-based learning course has only been delivered twice. Because of its intensity, class sizes were limited. However, feedback from the two offerings has been positive (response rate: 2/10, 20%). Comments from participants were that “there is a clear significance and urgency of solving the mystery assigned to each group because each case is a real patient case,” and “It is one of the rare courses that we realize that our learning and skillset are directly related to changes in patients’ and other peoples’ lives.”

Utilizing case-based learning in these three CCaTS course offerings has demonstrated that these techniques are well suited to translational science education. While defining translational science can be challenging, these case-based approaches afford trainees an experiential knowledge of translational science across multiple disciplines. The variety of methods of delivering case material, including discussion, teamwork, and problem-solving, can be applied to many of the transdisciplinary and multidisciplinary areas unique to translational educational programing. This novel application of case-based learning methods helps to address the gap in the literature regarding how best to teach translational science concepts to early-career scholars. Given the applied nature of biomedical research, little additional faculty development and training was needed to equip educators to develop and implement these courses effectively. Furthermore, case studies can be employed throughout the entire clinical translational spectrum, from basic and preclinical work through to clinical and population-based learning. Finally, the spirit of case-based learning—learning through doing—fits well with the application-driven philosophy of clinical and translational science. 10 Courses in regulatory science and team science emphasizing the use of case-based learning are forthcoming, with the goal of providing additional immersive learning opportunities in areas of clinical and translational science that are difficult to teach in a traditional didactic manner.

Supplementary Material

Windebank.sdc.final, acknowledgements:.

The authors would like to acknowledge the support of Katherine Cornelius, MPH, in gathering data from post-course surveys for inclusion in this manuscript.

Funding/Support: This project was supported by Clinical and Translational Science Award Grant Number UL1 TR000135 from the National Center for Advancing Translational Science (NCATS). Its contents are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.

Other disclosures: None reported.

Ethical approval: Reported as not applicable.

Contributor Information

Alexandra J. Greenberg-Worisek, epidemiology, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota.

Katherine A. Campbell, molecular pharmacology and experimental therapeutics, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota.

Eric W. Klee, biomedical informatics, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota.

Nathan P. Staff, neurology, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota.

Lisa A. Schimmenti, pediatrics, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota.

Karen M. Weavers, research operations, Center for Clinical and Translational Science, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota.

Stephen C. Ekker, biochemistry and molecular biology, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota.

Anthony J. Windebank, neurology, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota.

Idea to Impact: Case Studies in Translational Science

How does a scientific idea become a reality? How does a research team navigate scientific, funding, and regulatory challenges to make a difference in the lives of patients and communities?

This series of  Idea to Impact Case Studies  provides a window into successful projects supported by Duke CTSI, revealing both their translational paths and the benefits they are yielding to the healthcare world.

Each Case Study includes:

Project Overview

Timeline of Funding and Commercialization Milestones

Summary of Translational Impact and Benefits

Resources Used

Individually and collectively, these case studies aim to:

Provide a  contextualized lens  on CTSA services by conveying their use within specific studies and research projects.

Provide a clear summative focus addressing  translational research outcomes and impacts .

Permit understanding of  inhibitors or challenges  in translational research process that CTSA may be situated to address.

Disseminate  facilitators or best practices  for improving translational research.

Paving the Pathway: YOJO, An Online Platform to Facilitate Persistence and Sustainability in Educational and Professional Development Programs

Pathway programs – which are programs that help someone move from one stage to the next in their educational career – operate in silos, making it difficult for learners to chart and persist on a path that supports their long-term career goals.

The Center for Pathway Programs is developing YOJO (short for “Your Journey”), an online platform that connects pathway programs, simplifies the application process, tracks participants, enhances evaluation, and ultimately promotes persistence.

New Option for Treatment of Uterine Fibroids: Engineering Smart Therapeutics

Uterine fibroids are common reproductive-age tumors. More than 80% of Black women and nearly 70% of White women have fibroids by age 50. Currently available interventions are either expensive, difficult to access, or have significant systemic side effects.

Thanks to a collaborative partnership between Duke and North Carolina Central University (NCCU) researchers developed and tested a protective carrier for drug therapeutics to enable a direct local injection into the uterine fibroid. This presents a minimally invasive treatment option for women suffering from uterine fibroids.

Collaboration Across Campuses: The NCCU Clinical Research Sciences Program

The lack of a diverse workforce in clinical research negatively impacts health outcomes and equity in clinical trials, healthcare, and medical practices.

The Clinical Research Sciences Program (CRSP) leveraged the partnership between North Carolina Central University and Duke University to create an environment for producing a highly trained and diverse workforce in clinical research.

Download the Case Study (PDF).

Oxysterols for Treatment of Perinatal Brain Injury

A first-in-class therapy to prevent cerebral palsy in premature infants.

Principal Investigator:  Dr. Eric Benner, Duke University School of Medicine, Department of Pediatrics

Premature infants are at higher risk for brain injuries that can cause lifelong impairments, such as cerebral palsy. This research is developing the first treatment to reverse the damage of these brain injuries, using a molecule found in human breast milk.

The ADAPTABLE Study

Aspirin dosing: a patient-centric trial assessing benefits and long-term effectiveness.

Principal Investigators:  Adrian Hernandez, MD, Vice Dean and Executive Director, Duke Clinical Research Institute; W. Schuyler Jones, MD, Assistant Professor of Medicine, Duke University School of Medicine

Aspirin is a mainstay therapy for patients with atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ASCVD), but there are unanswered questions about the best dosage. ADAPTABLE studied the effectiveness and safety of the two most common aspirin doses, and also served as a demonstration project for clinical trials in the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research network (PCORnet), enrolling more than 15,000 participants across multiple sites.

Biopsychosocial Determinants of Pain in Sickle Cell Disease

A study of the contributors to severe pain, toward better management.

Principal Investigator:  Mitchell Knisely, PhD, RN, Duke University School of Nursing

Many people with sickle cell disease frequently experience severe pain, and the contributing factors to that symptom have not been fully understood. This research project identified a biomarker that is significantly associated with pain in people with sickle cell disease, offering a new exploratory direction for research.

About the Translational Science Benefits Model

These case studies have been produced using the Translational Science Benefits Model (TSBM) developed at Washington University. The TSBM is a framework public health and clinical scientists use to demonstrate the impact of their work in the real world. To learn more,  visit TSBM on the web .

Citation:  Institute of Clinical & Translational Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis. Translational Science Benefits Model website.  https://translationalsciencebenefits.wustl.edu . Published February 1, 2019. Accessed December 20, 2020.

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Cohort Studies Versus Case-Control Studies on Night-Shift Work and Cancer Risk: The Importance of Exposure Assessment

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Kyriaki Papantoniou, Johnni Hansen, Cohort Studies Versus Case-Control Studies on Night-Shift Work and Cancer Risk: The Importance of Exposure Assessment, American Journal of Epidemiology , Volume 193, Issue 4, April 2024, Pages 577–579, https://doi.org/10.1093/aje/kwad227

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It is a general assumption that the prospective cohort study design is the gold standard approach and is superior to the case-control study design in epidemiology. However, there may be exceptions if the exposure is complex and requires collection of detailed information on many different aspects. Night-shift work, which impairs circadian rhythms, is an example of such a complex occupational exposure and may increase the risks of breast, prostate, and colorectal cancer. So far, for logistical reasons, investigators in cohort studies have assessed shift work rather crudely, lacking information on full occupational history and relevant shift-work metrics, and have presented mostly null findings. On the other hand, most cancer case-control studies have assessed the lifetime occupational histories of participants, including collection of detailed night-shift work metrics (e.g., type, duration, intensity), and tend to show positive associations. In this commentary, we debate why cohort studies with weak exposure assessment and other limitations might not necessarily be the preferred or less biased approach in assessing the carcinogenicity of night-shift work. Furthermore, we propose that risk-of-bias assessment and comparison of associations between studies with low versus high risks of bias be considered in future synthesis of the evidence.

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