A Corpus-based Translation Study On Jingju Bai She Zhuan

The improvement of China’s comprehensive national strength and the enhancement of the recognition on the country’s soft power stabilize the pace of Chinese culture“going globally”.As one of the essential components of Chinese culture,jingju and its translation have drawn mounting attention of worldwide scholars.Firstly,based on Mona Baker’s definition of translator’s style and Huang Libo’s idea of parallel model,this research makes an investigation of the translator’s styles in Bai She Zhuan’s three English translations by Xianyi Yang,Donald Chang and Xiaoming Yang from the perspective of lexical and sentential levels.Secondly,according to Eugene Nida’s classification of culture and Lawrence Venuti and Xiong Bing’s definition of translation strategies,the translation strategies among the three versions are judged and quantified.Finally,using the theoretical framework combining translator’s subjectivity and AndréLefevere’s rewriting theory under the perspective of the cultural turn,this research also explores the causes of the differences among these translations in terms of their translator’s styles and translation strategies.A descriptive and explanatory research has been conducted with both quantitative and qualitative approaches by quantitative linguistics and multi-factor analysis.It is found that Xianyi Yang’s translation has been endowed with higher lexical richness and readability;Donald Chang’s translation is featured by lower lexical richness and difficulty,and its proportion of domestication strategy is the highest;Preferring more complex sentence structure,Xiaoming Yang used foreignization more than the others.Moreover,in light of the internal factors of the three translators,such as language competence,translation attitude,cultural accomplishment and the external factors in the creation of the three translations,such as political background,poetic context,translation motivation,the existence of these differences are objectively reasonable.This research answers the question regarding the correlation between some subjective and objective factors and the formation of specific translator’s style and translation strategy.It provides a rudimentary reference for further research on jingju translation,so as to promote Chinese culture “going globally” and strengthen the soft power of national culture.