A Corpus-Based Study On The Chinese-English Translation Of Shi-Construction By Learner Translators

In modern Chinese,the sentence pattern with the words “Shi”(?),“Rang”(?),“Ling”(?),“Jiao”(?)expressing causation and causative meaning is referred to as “causative sentence”.The most representative causative sentence is the sentence pattern with the word “Shi”(?),which is called Shi-construction.As the most typical and commonly used causative sentence pattern in modern Chinese,Shi-construction has attracted a lot of attention from scholars.Based on a self-built bilingual professional translator corpus and a self-built learner translator corpus,and combining quantitative analysis and qualitative analysis,this thesis aims to explore the translation of Shi-construction by learner translators,investigate the similarities and differences between learner translators and professional translators and try to figure out the underlying causes for the inappropriate translation of Shi-construction by learner translators.The major findings of this study include the following three aspects.Firstly,in the translation of Shi-construction by learner translators,analytic causative construction and the omission of causation account for high proportions while other corresponding translations take up very small proportions.This may imply that the corresponding translations of Shi-construction by learner translators are monotonous and learner translators tend to pursue simple equivalence between the translation of Shi-construction and the source text.Secondly,there exist similarities and differences between learner translators and professionals on the translation of Shi-construction.The similarities lie in that in the translation of Shi-construction,analytic causative construction and the omission of causation are used in high frequency,which indicates that both learner translators and professional ones are apt to use the analytic causative construction and the omission of causation as the equivalence of the Shi-construction.The differences include a gap between learner translators and professional ones in the use of analytic causative construction with MAKE and the use of lexical causative construction as well.In the translation of Shi-construction,the proportion of analytic causative construction with MAKE by learner translators is nearly twice that of professional translators,which indicates an overuse of the formal equivalence strategy by learner translators.Apart from this,the proportion of lexical causative construction by learner translators is just one-tenth that of professional ones,implying a lack of proficiency in the use of lexical causative construction to express the causative meaning in translating the Shi-construction.Thirdly,the causes of the inappropriate translation of Shi-construction by learner translators may be the negative language transfer,avoidance strategy,insufficient input of target language and so on.Based on the above research results,the author holds that in translation learning and practice,learner translators should pay attention to the differences between English and Chinese to avoid the negative transfer of their mother tongue.In addition,learner translators need to be engaged in more authentic native materials as much as possible.At last,in translation pedagogy,teachers should attach great importance to training learners' thinking transference in translation and help learners to achieve automatic transformation from source language to target language so as to improve their translation.