A Comparative Corpus Linguistic Study Of English Versions Of Biancheng

Corpus-based translation studies,i.e.the combination of corpus linguistics and translation research,have been focusing on descriptive and empirical aspects of translated texts.Corpus-based studies on the style of translator(s),as one of the main branches of corpus-based translation studies,have provided new research thinking as well as a new method for translator’s style research.Biancheng is the representative work of Shen Congwen,which has been selected into the top 100 Chinese novels in the 20th century,ranking the second.According to CNKI,previous studies on the English translations of Biancheng mainly focused on aesthetics of translation,traditional translational strategies,and corpus-based comparative stylistic feature analysis.Although some corpus-based studies(e.g.Peng Fasheng&Wan Yingting 2014;Pu Pu 2012)have been done on the English translations of Biancheng,none of them has examined all four English translations available so far.In addition,a more in-depth comparative analysis of the stylistic features across the four versions is needed.This thesis compares and analyses the stylistic features shown in all four English versions,i.e.the translations by Emily Hahn&Shing Mo-Lei(shortened as HS),Ching Di&Robert Payne(CP),Gladys Yang(Y),and Jeffrey C.Kinkley(K)on the basis of comparable corpora(one translation as one sub-corpus,and the other three translations as one sub-corpus).It mainly examines POS,keywords and key clusters across the four translations,revealing the different translation styles of the translators discussed.The thesis finds that the word type of the Y version is more varied than that of the K version,and the HS version and K version are more faithful with the original text,focusing on literal translation,while the CP version and the Y version focus more on free translation.For the differences in POS use across four translations,the thesis concludes that the Y version and the K version are quite similar in the use of certain POS types of linguistic items and can be classified as one group.Compared with the other group(the HS version and the CP version),they use more singular articles,singular determiners,singular common nouns,locative adverbs,particles,infinitive markers,and less coordinating conjunctions,existential theres,general adjectives,1st person singular subjective personal pronouns,and 1st person plural subjective personal pronouns.The keywords analyses also find that the HS version and the CP version use more coordinating conjunctions and pronouns,and less prepositions than the other two versions.Three-word key cluster analyses tell us that the CP version uses more It/There clusters and clause clusters,which echoes the findings of POS use,and explains why the mean sentence lengths of the CP version and the HS version are longer than the other group.