A Corpus-based Research On The Translators' Style For App Localization Translation

Many App develop companies sprout up in Chinese local market under the background of booming O2 O economy.Online ride-hailing apps also entered more people's daily life.Some Chinese App development companies are seeking for the broader abroad markets in recent years.Localization is the essential part in the internationalization strategy.Localization translation is an important part of App localization,influencing the end users' experience in target markets.Translators in the localization translation industry can be divided into in-house translators and vendor translators.Because of the different translator's subjectivity,there is a huge discrepancy in the translator's style between in-house translators and vendor translators.This research is based on the systemic functional linguistics,and the corpus-based translation methodology is applied.The Chinese-English parallel corpora are from the in-house(“ITC”)and vendor translation(“TVC”)texts of DiDi Chuxing Co.Ltd.(“DiDi”),and the analysis on translator's style is conducted from three main aspects,lexicon,grammar,and readability.The findings are:(1)Lexicon level.There is no tremendous diversity in STTR and average word length.(2)Grammar level.TVC's average sentence length is longer than ITC's.TVC prefers structural equivalence,while more semantic equivalence in ITC.Besides,ITC is skilled to transfer Chinese “?” to English passive voice.The politeness principle is more evident in ITC.What's more,the modal verbs from ITC are medium low value orientated and implicit oriented,revealing the politeness principle.(3)Readability level.The readability formula and the readability survey are combined in the research.ITC is superior to TVC,both in the formula and survey consequence.ITC is more friendly to the end users.This research is aimed to provide some practical suggestions for the Chinese App development companies: the in-house translators should play the leading role,and the vendor translation company play the supplementary role.It's also expected to strengthen the quality control for the vendor translators.Besides,readability evaluation should be included.These methods contribute to keep the coherence between the local App and the localized App,improve the end users' experience,and help the Chinese App companies go global.