Band 3, Heft 2

The semantic and syntactic feature of the character shuō has been one of the central issues explored by scholars who study Chinese. However, none of their studies systematically survey why and how shuō occurs in connectives. Under the theoretical framework of SFG, this paper first introduces some critical notions of semantic domain and primitive morpheme, which help to interpret why shuō is manifested in varied grammatical environments. Then a dichotomy of lexicalized and grammaticalized shuō -connectives is proposed to illustrate how shuō “moves” into conjunctive items. A close analysis of some peculiar shuō -connectives indicates that (1) shuō marks the internal process in lexicalized items; and (2) shuō may serve as internal process, impersonal projecting process and conditional binder in grammaticalized items. It is argued that the current framework of projection semantic domain should be fine-tuned so as to take the textual manifestation into account.

This paper is concerned with the nature of storytelling and how different types of story or narrative might be classified and characterised by reference to their generic structures and ultimate social functions. More specifically, it is concerned with Persian/Farsi-language reports of crimes in Iranian newspapers. It describes and analyses the various ways in which these texts are organised structurally, informationally and with respect to “newsworthiness”, the various ways in which they deal with chronological sequence and the various ways in which they position the reader attitudinally vis-à-vis the events described and/or their protagonists. In so doing, it provides insights into the similarities and differences between these instances of Persian/Farsi journalism and what the journalism studies literature has presented as “typical” of modern news reports in English and other languages. It also provides insights into the nature of these Iranian crime reports as instances of storytelling or narrative, proposing that taxonomies of the different subtypes of storytelling outlined in the Sydney Genre School literature should be refined to accommodate the modes of storytelling observed in the authors’ data set of crime reports.

Medical translation is performed as a series of collaborative efforts from doctors and professional translators. Very often the results of their collaboration are medical questionnaires intended for patients. Medical survey instruments have proved their worth as reliable tools of a considerable predictive value, though their translation requires a specific methodology due to a culture-bound character of the material. Equivalence of the original and translated texts, translation quality, and the respondents’ ultimate satisfaction with the surveying practice depend to a great extent upon the degree of translator’s cultural competence, health literacy, and his/her awareness of the pragmatic and communicative aspects of translation. The task of producing and validating an accurate and fluently translated Ukrainian version of a disease-specific health-related quality-of-life instrument is exemplified by the IOF’s 1-min risk test, a 10-item questionnaire, designed to evaluate the likelihood of developing osteoporosis.