A Corpus-based Study On The Translation OfDelexicalized Verb "Make"

In the early 1990 s,with the rise of the description of translation studies and corpus linguistics,more and more scholars begin to apply the corpus to the translation studies of English and Chinese novels.Delexical verbs are verbs with reduced semantic content except strengthened grammatical functions.With the assistance of the self-constructed English-Chinese Parallel Corpus of The Moon and Sixpence,this thesis selects verb “make” and its variants as an example to explore delexical verbs in the two Chinese versions of The Moon and Sixpence translated by Fu Weici and Xu Chungang separately.The case study of the Chinese translations of The Moon and Sixpence adopts the empirical methodology used in corpus-based translation studies.According to the characteristics of the materials,the researcher of this thesis selects a delexicalized verb“make” and its variant forms makes,making and made.By using computer program,the author retrieves 290 sentences in the original text containing “make” and its variants.In order to ensure that the verb “make” and its variants obtained in this paper are all delexical usages,the author divides all sentences containing “make” in the novel of The Moon and Sixpence into different collocation patterns,and finally made sure these collocations(make+n/pron,make+part,make+n+n/prep,make+n+v)are delexical usages in selecting sentences.This paper focuses on two major points.One the one hand,the two translators apply the same or similar translation strategies when they deal with delexicalized verbs structure.From the perspective of researching,this thesis lists two similar strategies of two translation versions in the field of translating delexicalized verbs “make” and its variant forms: verbalization,implicitization.Firstly,the translation strategy is to verbalize English nouns into Chinese verbs is adopted by two translators to make translation progress convenient.Verbalization not only expresses specific behaviors,but also integrates the basic semantics contained in the original nouns.Therefore,it is richer and more vivid than ordinary verbs in connotation and expression.In modernChinese,verbs are used frequently,and translations of noun verbs are in line with Chinese statutes.It conforms to Chinese language customs.Secondly,the strategy of implicitization reflects the translator's alternative translation method.On the other hand,at the same time,the author makes a comparative study of the main differences between the two translators' translation verb “make” and its variants.According to the statistic,the author finds that the Chinese marking word“?”takes up 0.216% in Fu's vision while in Xu' vision it occupies 0.4041%.Therefore,the author applies the theory of domestication and foreignization to explain the rationality and causes of the difference.The corpus-based translation study carries on comparing the translations of the“make” and its variants in the two translated versions of The Moon and the Sixpence.The researcher concludes that Fu Weici's translation style retains most of the characteristics of the original works and makes readers of the translation produce different aesthetic experiences from reading original Chinese works.However,Xu Chungang's translation style meets the target-language reader's expectations and filters out some authorial stylistic features that are not conformed to Chinese language,culture and literary norms to enhance the readability of the translation.