MICA Gene Deletion in 3411 DNA Samples from Five Distinct Populations in Mainland China and Lack of Association with Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma (NPC) in a Southern Chinese Han population.

Deletion of major histocompatibility complex class I chain-related genes A (MICA*Del) was investigated in 3,411 DNA samples from two southern Chinese Han populations (Hunan Han, HNH; Guangdong Han, GDH), two northern Chinese populations (Inner Mongolia Han, IMH; Inner Mongolia Mongol, IMM) and one southeastern Chinese Han population (Fujian Han, FJH) using an in-house polymerase chain reaction-sequence specific priming (PCR-SSP) assay, which enables direct discrimination between heterozygote and homozygote for MICA*Del. MICA*Del showed a frequency ranging from 0.8% in FJH to 5.7% in IMM (Pcorrected < 0.05), indicating northward increase in frequency of MICA*Del in Chinese populations. In contrast to the association reported recently in a Taiwan Chinese population and a Malaysian Chinese cohort, MICA*Del distribution did not differ between 1,120 patients with nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) and 1,483 normal controls in the HNH population (1.03% in NPC cases vs 1.18% in the controls, OR (95% CI) = 0.87 (0.51-1.47), p = 0.69). Further gender-stratified analysis also failed to disclose any male-specific association reported in a Taiwan Chinese population. Multi-locus typing of the 94 samples carrying MICA*Del revealed two new haplotypes, HLA-A*11:01-B*13:01-MICA*Del-MICB*009N-DRB1*04:06 and HLA-B*35:01-MICA*Del-MICB*009N-DRB1*15:01, in addition to HLA-B*48-MICA*Del. Unexpectedly, two samples with MICA*Del in the HNH population were each consistently found to have two distinct MICA alleles, indicating the existence of two MICA gene copies on certain HLA haplotypes. Based on the results from a sizeable case-control study, our data suggest that there is no association between MICA*Del and NPC in the southern Chinese Han population.

Representation of interactional metadiscourse in translated and native English: A corpus-assisted study.

The present study aimed to investigate the differences between translated and non-translated English texts with regard to interactional metadiscourse features, which are crucial in engaging readers in the reasoning process and establishing the credibility of a proposition. Despite numerous studies investigating lexical and syntactic differences between translated and non-translated language, little research has been conducted on the textual level in terms of metadiscourse use. To address this gap, we conducted a comparative analysis of six interactional markers across two comparable multi-genre corpora, namely, FLOB (Freiburg-LOB Corpus of British English) comprising native English and the English subset of COCE (Corpus of Chinese-English) containing translated English. Our ANOVA analyses revealed that translated English exhibited a tendency to underuse stance features, such as hedges, boosters, and attitude markers, compared to native English. Furthermore, our post-hoc analysis revealed that genre modulated the use of metadiscourse features in both translated and native texts. Importantly, we found that there was greater cross-genre variation in the use of interactional metadiscourse in translated English than in native English. Our study highlights the unique characteristics of translation and emphasizes the importance of taking into account metadiscourse in the field of translation studies.

A Corpus-Based Investigation of Extra-Textual, Connective, and Emphasizing Additions in English-Chinese Conference Interpreting.

Findings from conference interpreting research in the Chinese context have suggested that interpreters barely produce extra-textual additions in rigidly structured press conferences, and that adding connectives and intensifiers is only required to help the English-speaking audience capture the logic embedded in implicit Chinese interclausal relations. Previous research in the Chinese context has tended to draw data almost exclusively from the Chinese Premier's Press Conference interpreting, which features interpreting from Chinese into English. In order to enrich conference interpreting corpora in Asia and to examine additions in the opposite interpreting direction for the same language pair, this study drew on authentic materials of six interpreted press conferences held at the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT). Contrary to previous research, our results showed that conference interpreters exhibited a certain degree of "visibility" through producing extra-textual additions, which is typical of interpreting in various community-based settings. Moreover, the addition of extra connectives and intensifiers that are common in Chinese-to-English interpreting was also identified. It is proposed that the interpreters' production of extra-textual additions is connected with the specific context of the AIT, whereas the connective and emphasizing additions are to a large extent caused by the grammaticalization process wherein particular linguistic devices change into discourse markers to fulfill the communicative needs in both English and Chinese.

Entropy-based discrimination between translated Chinese and original Chinese using data mining techniques.

The present research reports on the use of data mining techniques for differentiating between translated and non-translated original Chinese based on monolingual comparable corpora. We operationalized seven entropy-based metrics including character, wordform unigram, wordform bigram and wordform trigram, POS (Part-of-speech) unigram, POS bigram and POS trigram entropy from two balanced Chinese comparable corpora (translated vs non-translated) for data mining and analysis. We then applied four data mining techniques including Support Vector Machines (SVMs), Linear discriminant analysis (LDA), Random Forest (RF) and Multilayer Perceptron (MLP) to distinguish translated Chinese from original Chinese based on these seven features. Our results show that SVMs is the most robust and effective classifier, yielding an AUC of 90.5% and an accuracy rate of 84.3%. Our results have affirmed the hypothesis that translational language is categorically different from original language. Our research demonstrates that combining information-theoretic indicator of Shannon's entropy together with machine learning techniques can provide a novel approach for studying translation as a unique communicative activity. This study has yielded new insights for corpus-based studies on the translationese phenomenon in the field of translation studies.

Syntactic complexity in translated and non-translated texts: A corpus-based study of simplification.

This study approaches the investigation of the simplification hypotheses in corpus-based translation studies from a syntactic complexity perspective. The research is based on two comparable corpora, the English monolingual part of COCE (Corpus of Chinese-English) and the native English corpus of FLOB (Freiburg-LOB Corpus of British English). Using the 13 syntactic complexity measures falling into five subconstructs (i.e. length of production unit, amount of subordination, amount of coordination, phrasal complexity and overall sentence complexity), our results show that translation as a whole is less complex compared to non-translation, reflected most prominently in the amount of subordination and overall sentence complexity. Further pairwise comparison of the four subgenres of the corpora shows mixed results. Specifically, the translated news is homogenous to native news as evidenced by the complexity measures; the translated genres of general prose and academic writing are less complex compared to their native counterparts while translated fiction is more complex than non-translated fiction. It was found that mean sentence length always produced a significant effect on syntactic complexity, with higher syntactic complexity for longer sentence lengths in both corpora. ANOVA test shows a highly significant main effect of translation status, with higher syntactic complexity in the non-translated texts (FLOB) than the translated texts (COCE), which provides support for the simplification hypothesis in translation. It is also found that, apart from translation status, genre is an important variable in affecting the complexity level of translated texts. Our study offers new insights into the investigation of simplification hypothesis from the perspective of translation from English into Chinese.

Translator's Style Through Lexical Bundles: A Corpus-Driven Analysis of Two English Translations of Hongloumeng.

Based on a corpus-driven analysis of two translated versions of Hongloumeng (one by David Hawkes and the other by Xianyi Yang and Gladys Yang) in parallel corpora, this article investigates the use of lexical bundles in an attempt to trace the stylistic features and differences in the translations produced by the respective translators. The Hongloumeng corpus is developed at the sentence level to facilitate co-occurrence of the source texts and the two corresponding translations. For this purpose, the three-word and four-word lexical bundles were first extracted and then analyzed with respect to the functional classification proposed by Biber et al. (2004). The results of the study show that Hawkes' translation is embedded with a greater number and variety of lexical bundles than the one by the Yang couple. The study also identified the differences between the two versions which can be traced back to the deployment of different translation strategies of the translators, appearing in turn to be influenced by the language backgrounds of the translators, the translation skopos and settings, and the social, political, and ideological milieu in which the translations were produced.

Effects of Directionality on Interpreting Performance: Evidence From Interpreting Between Chinese and English by Trainee Interpreters.

Interpreters can either interpret from the first language (L1) to the second language (L), or in the other direction. Understanding translation and interpreting as a direction-dependent process contributes to a wider and more critical view regarding the role of both languages in the process, as well as the identity, perspectives, and preferences of translators. The effect of directionality primarily weighs on stimulus and individual factors. This study explores the impact of directionality on the performance of trainee interpreters by examining four critical aspects of quality in target speeches, namely: speech rate, information completeness, delivery, and quality of expression. We observed an advantage for L2-L1 over L1-L2 interpreting in the form of interpreting quality (i.e., delivery and quality of expression) but not in content (i.e., the level of information retained in the target language). These effects of interpreting directionality suggest an important role of L2 proficiency in interpreting. Moreover, L1-L2 interpreting is cognitively demanding compared to L2-L1 interpreting for trainee interpreters. This research sheds light on the cognitive mechanisms of interpreting in different directions and provides pedagogical recommendations for training interpreters.

NKG2C copy number variations in five distinct populations in mainland China and susceptibility to nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC).

In this study, copy number variation (CNV) of NKG2C gene was investigated in 1129 normal, unrelated individuals representing two southern Chinese Han populations (Hunan Han and Guangdong Han), two northern Chinese populations (Inner Mongolia Han and Inner Mongolia Mongol) and one southeastern Chinese Han population (Fujian Han) using polymerase chain reaction-sequence-specific priming (PCR-SSP) method. CNV of NKG2C gene did not vary significantly among the five Chinese populations, with NKG2C gene deletion showing a frequency ranging from 0.2031 to 0.2688. Compared with worldwide ethnic groups, very significant difference was observed between the five Chinese populations and the Mexican mestizos (all Pcorrected=0.0025), and between the Fujian Han population and the German population (Pcorrected=0.005). We further examined CNV of NKG2C and HLA-E allelic distribution in 653 patients afflicted with nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) in Hunan province. Neither CNV of NKG2C nor HLA-E was associated with NPC. There was a trend of reduced NPC risk in individuals who were homozygous for both HLA-E(∗)01:03 and NKG2C deletion (0.46% vs. 2.51%, P=0.0076, Pcorrected=0.0684, OR (95% CI)=0.1794 (0.0473-0.6809)). Taken together, our results suggest that NKG2C deletion and HLA-E signalling pathway does not play a major role in determining genetic susceptibility to NPC.