A Corpus-based Study Of Translator’s Style Of The Three English Versions Of Luotuo Xiangzi

Style in traditional translation studies is always associated with the source text or the source text author in that translation in traditional translation studies is only taken as a recreation of the source style or a replacement of the source text by a semantically and pragmatically equivalent target text.The major task of translators is to reproduce varied “author images” in their translations and the translator’s style should be totally invisible in translation.With the development of descriptive translation studies,the study of translator’s style gradually develops toward the trend of a more systematic research and a new methodology of corpus study is introduced to the investigation of translator’s style through large-scale linguistic data.It is owing to the emergence of descriptive translation studies that the discursive presence or “fingerprints” of a translator becomes the focus of translation studies.Compared with traditional translation studies,descriptive translation studies do not emphasize the supremacy of the source text in translation any more.Instead,descriptive translation studies pay more attention to the open invention of translators or their unconscious language habits in translations.With the help of WordSmith 4.0 and AntConc 3.2.1,this thesis aims to conduct a contrastive investigation of translator’s styles of the three English translations of Luotuo Xiangzi(Shi Xiaoqing’s version,Jean James’ s version and Goldblatt’s version)on the basis of a self-compiled corpus.This thesis aims to answer three questions.First,what are the translator’s styles of the three English translations proper? Second,what are the translator’s styles of the three English translations under the influence of the source text? Third,does a translator’s background influence his or her translation?The study of the translator’s styles of the three English translations proper is target-text-oriented(also called T-type translator’s style),which investigates the translator’s styles of the three translations in terms of the translations.This thesis mainly investigates the T-type translator’s styles of the three English translations from the lexical level,syntactic level and textual level.The study of the translator’s styles of the three English translations under the influence of the source text is source-text-oriented(also called S-type translator’s style),which explores the three translators’ styles in the light of the source text.To investigate the S-type translator’s styles of the three English translations,this thesis makes a contrastive analysis of the three translators’ strategies for translating proverbs and the free indirect thoughts in the source text.Studies show that a translator’s background does influence his or her translation.Styles of translators with similar backgrounds present much similarity.For the T-type translator’s styles of the three English translations,Shi Xiaoqing’s and Goldblatt’s versions bear much similarity.Shi Xiaoqing and Goldblatt have good command of both English and Chinese owing to similar backgrounds.Hence it is natural for them to be affected by both the English language and the Chinese language.Findings are illustrated as follows:At the lexical level,STTR of Shi Xiaoqing’s version is the highest,which indicates she has the highest level of lexical diversity.STTR is the lowest in Jean James’ s version,which suggests that the vocabulary in her translation is the least varied.The STTR of Goldblatt’s version bears much resemblance with that of Shi Xiaoqing’s version.At the syntactic level,the frequency of subordinators in Shi Xiaoqing’s version is the highest,which is only 0.1% more than that of Goldblatt’s version.The higher frequency of subordinators in Shi Xiaoqing’s and Goldblatt’s versions implies that their translations have larger amount of complex sentences.Thus,their translations are more mature and complicated.Jean James’ version has the lowest frequency of subordinators,which means sentence structures of her version are the most simple and the easiest for readers to understand.At the textual level,Jean James’ s version has the highest frequency of personal references,which implies that her version is the easiest to follow because of the high frequency of personal references and frequent use of the third person he,it and they in her version.The frequency of personal references in Shi Xiaoqing’s translation is the lowest,which is very close to that in Goldblatt’s version.From the features of the three translations presented from the lexical level,syntactic level and textual level,it can be concluded that Jean James tends to simplify her translation by using the less varied words,the simple sentence structure and the explicit cohesive devices.Goldblatt’s translation bears much similarity to Shi Xiaoqing’s translation.Both Goldblatt’s and Shi Xiaoqing’s translations have a high level of lexical diversity,use complicated sentence structures and apply less cohesive devices.In terms of the S-type translator’s styles of the three English translations,as native English translators,Jean James’ and Goldblatt’s versions possess much similarity.When translate proverbs,both Jean James and Goldblatt use more foreignization in order to retain the culture flavor of the source text and convey target language readers the culture information of the source text.Shi Xiaoqing almost evenly uses foreignization and domestication to cater to target language readers.When translate free indirect thoughts in the source text,both Jean James and Goldblatt use various discourse presentation modes.On the contrary,Shi Xiaoqing only adopts the free indirect thought.The discourse presentation modes except the free indirect thought in Jean James’ and Goldblatt’ translations distance readers from the characters producing the speech.By contrast,Shi Xiaoqing puts readers directly inside the character’s mind by applying the free indirect thought.