A Corpus Based Study On Translators Style Exemplified By Three English Versions Of Zhuangzi

This paper investigates the translator’s style of the three highly influential English versions of the Chinese classic Zhuangzi in the context of corpus translation studies. The investigation is mainly conducted within two perspectives: diachronic and synchronic studies. The items being tested include the type/token rate, average sentence length, and the structure of sentence. Besides, the newly developed method of narrative progression in the field of corpus stylistics is also added to the main part of this study. The methods of this paper are mainly provided by the corpus translation studies(CTS). Supported by the objective data, the mode of descriptive and empirical study is conducted in this paper in hope for overcoming the short points of the traditional translation study which is featured by prescription and empiricism.This paper is expected to get these two outcomes or contributions: First, the CTS is a tendency in the background of the paradigm shift. Although the corpus in this paper is by no means a perfect one, it will give some lights on the study of translator’s style of Zhuangzi in the future. Second, as for the methods of CTS, a newly developed research mode is added to the main part of this study. The constructive study of narrative progression in the three versions of Zhuangzi will enrich the perspectives of CTS on one hand, and further validates the theory of corpus stylistics with Chinese classic Zhuangzi as an example on the other hand.