Translators’ Styles In Poetry Translation ——A Corpus-Based Study Of Four English Versions Of Shi Jing

This study chooses Shi Jing,the first anthology of Chinese poetry,as the research object.And based on the self-built small parallel corpora and comparable corpus of original English poems,it conducts a quantitative and qualitative analysis that compares the translations by Xu Yuanchong,Wang Rongpei（with Ren Xiuhua）,Jennings,and Legge respectively at four levels（lexical,syntactical,phonological and textual）to recognize each translator’s unique "fingerprint",and test if simplification and explicitation universals are extant in all versions.Besides,the translations are roughly put in two groups according to text similarity statistics.It is found that（1）On the translators’ styles:the four translations exhibit different styles at all levels.Based on text similarity,they fall into two groups.（A）Xu and Wang（both Chinese translators）belong to the same group because their translations are both simple and plain,featuring:（a-lexically）low vocabulary richness and short average word length;（b-syntactically）simple sentence structures with few variations;（c-phonologically）concise rhyming patterns that have some regularity;（d-textually）low frequencies of connectives.Therefore,generally speaking,the two versions are pretty readable and suitable for general readers.（B）Another group is made up of Jennings and Legge（both British sinologists）.The style of this group is relatively complex and sophisticated,showing:（a）great lexical diversity and a large proportion of long and difficult words;（b）complicated compound sentences which are changeable in structure;（c）wide variety and weak uniformity of rhyme schemes;（d）heavy use of logical connectors.Their translations are somewhat difficult to read and are more fit for sophisticated or academic readers.（2）On the translation universals:indicators like type-token ratio and total sentence number reveal that each translation displays a trend of explicitation as they all supplement or overtly express the information implied in the original text.And we believe this is not only in line with the general law of translation but also supportive of the conclusion made by Blum Kulka（1986）.It is,however,worth mentioning that according to other parameters,Jenning’s and Legge’s versions do not fully agree with the simplification universal,which is probably closely related to the stylistic complexities of the two translations themselves and may be affected by factors like the purpose of translation and the translator’s idiosyncrasy.（3）As for the overall characteristics of the translated poems,the poems rendered by Westerners（Britons）are closer in style to modern native English songs than those translated by Chinese translators.This is certainly understandable.On top of that,a brief list of some "extremes" in the four translations is noted in this thesis.