A Comparative Corpus-aided Study On The Translation Of The Words For Wars In San Guo Yan Yi

One of the reasons that makes San Guo Yan Yi still popular today is that the vivid characterization of this book brings campaigns and battles back to life from almost two thousand years ago. These scenes include large numbers of words for strategies, tactics, war tricks and specific fighting actions which embody rich and unique Chinese culture. The author of this thesis attempts to apply both quantitative and qualitative approaches to the study with the aid of parallel corpora. The words for wars under discussion are personal action words, battle process words and battle description words. Firstly, the author has calculated frequency of the words for wars in the source text, and secondly the author has conducted a comparative research on the two English versions in terms of the translation of these words for wars. The author intends to compare and analyze two English versions of this book to explore the translation principle and methods.The author has come to the following conclusions:1) The translators change their strategies in different situations even if the same word or expression is used in the source text.2) Various strategies tend to be applied in translating the words for wars.3) In general the two translators employ different strategies in translating words for wars, so the results are also different.