Translation Comparison Study, Based On The Statistics Of The Chinese-english Ditransitive Construction

The paper conducts a manual retrieval among the two-way parallel linguistic material between Chinese and English, which amounts to around 2.8millon, to make a comparative statistics and analysis on Ditransitive construction translation between the two languages. The research shows that literal translation is the most common way used in Chinese-English Ditransitive construction translation, accounting for 59.7percent; however, in English-Chinese, transferred translation is the most common way, which accounting for 49.3percent.From the perspective of the two languages, literal translation is the major method (account for 59.7percent), followed by transferred translation (23percent) and free translation (17.3percent) in Chinese-English Ditransitive construction translation; nevertheless, in English-Chinese Ditransitive construction translation, transferred translation is the main way (account for 49.3percent), and followed by literal translation (27.4percent) and free translation (23.3percent). Furthermore, the adoption frequency of the latter two translation methods in English-Chinese varies slightly.From the view of each sub-sort Ditransitive construction in the translation of Chinese-English and English-Chinese, there are some differences on the rules of translation between Trivalent verb Ditransitive construction and Bivalent verb Ditransitive construction. In Chinese-English Ditransitive construction translation, the major method Trivalent verb Ditransitive construction translation adopted is literal translation (account for 68.6percent), followed by transferred translation (20.8percent) and free translation (10.6percent); the main way Bivalent verb Ditransitive construction used is free translation(account for 44.2percent), followed by transferred translation(31.4percent) and literal translation (21.4percent). Correspondingly, in English-Chinese Ditransitive construction translation, both Trivalent verb and Bivalent verb Ditransitive construction translation use transferred translation as the major method (respectively account for 49.2percent and 50percent), but differ in the second and third one, which in Trivalent verb Ditransitive construction is literal translation (32.8percent) and free translation (18percent), the other one is free translation (45percent) and literal translation (5percent).We also found that in the same amount of linguistic material, the number of English Ditransitive construction is higher than that of Chinese, which indicates that the use frequency of Ditransitive construction in English is higher than in Chinese. Meanwhile, after the classification of the construction in two languages according to the valence of the verbs that entering the construction, we also get that the number of Trivalent verb Ditransitive construction in Chinese is 341, accounts for 79.9percent of all (427); similarly in English, Trivalent Ditransitive construction accounts for 80.6percent of all (515) with the number of 415. So we can conclude that trivalent verb is the principle element of Ditransitive construction verbs in both languages.In addition, we also made a statistically analysis on the verbs of Trivalent construction in both languages based on traditional criteria of semantic classification. There are 136 Give-type verbs,45 Inform-type verbs,38 Address-type verbs,11 Obtain-type verbs and 4 Promise-type verbs in Chinese Trivalent verb Ditransitive construction; On the other hand, there are 282 Give-type verbs,83 Inform-type verbs, 33 Address-type verbs,8 Obtain-type verbs and 9 Promise-type verbs in English Trivalent verb Ditransitive construction. Apparently, Give-type verbs take a high proportion in both Chinese and English Trivalent verb Ditransitive construction, which respectively is 40percent and 68percent. Besides, Inform-type and Address-type verbs are also an integrant part in forming Trivalent verb Ditransitive construction.