A Corpus-driven Comparative Study On Translator’s Style Of Li Bai’s Poetry

Li Bai,a representative of romantic poetry in China,is a famous poet in the Tang Dynasty,and he is known as “the fairy of poetry”.His poems have been extolled at home and abroad,and are regarded as classics of ancient poetry.This study selects 33 English translations of Li Bai’s poems by Xu Yuanchong and Sun Dayu as the research objectives and conduct a comparative study of translator’s style of the two tr.The self-built corpus and related software such as Antconc and Wordsmith are used as tools for quantitative analysis,combined with qualitative analysis.The study range covers text,para-text,and translation strategies and methods.The text includes vocabulary,sentences,and texts;the para-text includes titles,annotations,preface,and postscript;translation strategies and methods are analyzed and summarized by examples of the two translations.In addition,this study will analyze the causes of formation of translator’s style from three aspects: the influence of the original poems,the translator’s translation thoughts and the external factors.The research results are as follows:(1)At text:(1)Lexical level: Sun has a more variable use of vocabulary than Xu for Sun has a higher standard type-token ratio than Xu.In terms of lexical density,there is no much difference between the two translations.But they are both higher than the original English poetry corpus especially in the proportion of nouns,which reflects the characteristics of combination of images of Chinese ancient Poetry.Sun has a more formal style than Xu,which is reflected by a higher usage of “the” and “of”.The top 10 words frequency list of the two translations are both conformed to native English.In word frequency of top ten content words,there appeared “moon”,“sky”,“high” and“mount” which is the reflection of lexical features of the original poems.Regarding to word length,Xu uses more 1-letter and 2-letter words than Sun,while Sun uses more4-letter,6-letter,7-letter,8 letter,9-letter,10-letter,and 11-letter words than Xu.At the same time,Sun has a higher average length of words than Xu.It indicates that Sun has a more difficult word use than Xu.(2)Syntactic level: Xu has a less total number of lines than Sun,which is closely to the original poem.This reflects his pursuit of beauty in form.Besides,Sun has a higher average length of line and sentence than Xu.This reflects that Sun has a longer sentence structure than Xu.In terms of sentence difficulty,there is no much difference in distribution of sentence types and they both have a larger proportion of simple and compound sentence and a smaller proportion of complex and compound-complex sentence,which indicates that the two Chinese translators both use simple structure in sentences.At the same time,the length of sentence types in Xu’s translation are ranked as follows: simple sentence<compound sentence<complex sentence<compound complex sentence,which conforms to the rules of native English.However,the length of the compound sentence in Sun’s translation is larger than the complex sentence,which indicates that Sun is more influenced by the syntactic style of the original poems.As for cohesive components,Xu is a little higher than Sun.In general,there is also no much difference,but they are both lower than the original English poetry corpus.This reflects that both two translators are influenced by the paratactic characteristics of the original poem.In terms of punctuation,there is no use of quotation marks,colon marks and dash marks in the original poems,which appeared in the two translations.This demonstrates the style of colloquialism in the two translations to some degree.Besides,it has also been found that Sun is more likely to use semi-colon than Xu.This indicates that Sun’s large use of semi-colon is influenced by the structure of the original poems on one hand.On the other hand,it reflects that he uses fewer cohesive components of discourse to connect clauses.(3)Textual level: Xu has a higher readability than Sun,which reflects that Xu’s translation is easier than that of Sun.however,they are both not difficult.In terms of personal reference,Sun has a higher usage of third person pronoun “it,its,one,one’s”.By analysis of examples,it indicates that Sun demonstrates more details by the usage of “it” and “its” and he likes using the narrative perspective of third person by “one” and “one’s”.(2)At para-text:(1)Title: Xu mainly uses free translation.His translation is not confined to the structure of the title of original poem and conforms to native English which is easier to understand.Sun tends to use word-for-word translation or direct translation which preserves the style and meaning of the original title.(2)Annotation:Xu’s annotation is small in scale,each piece is short with fewer information,while Sun’s annotation is large in scale,each piece is abundant with lots of information about the unique culture in Li Bai’s poems.(3)Preface and postscript: Xu’s preface introduces Li Bai’s lifetime and appreciates some Li Bai’s poems.He proposed to share the beauty of Chinese ancient poetry with English readers around the world.This indicates that the author’s translation purpose is to broadcast the Chinese ancient poetry to the English language world.Sun’s preface is created by his descendants.It introduces Sun’s life experience in academia and his contribution in poetry translation and creation,especially his “sound group” theory,and lists some of his famous translated works.Besides,there is a paper which shares his thoughts on rendering ancient Chinese poetry into English metrical verse in the appendix.(3)Translation strategies and methods: by analysis of examples,it has been found that Xu likes using free translation with the techniques of omission or addition.While Sun always uses word-for-word translation or literal translation,which preserves the meaning of the original poem.Besides,it has been discovered that Sun prefers to use transliteration than Xu by quantitative analysis.Thus,it can be concluded that Xu adopts the strategy of domestication while Sun adopts the strategy of foreignization.This thesis also analyzes causes of formation of translator’s style from the influence of source text,translator’s translation thoughts and external factors.It has been found that the two translators are both influenced by the original poem in text to some extent.But they also show distinct difference of characteristics of their own which can be explained by their translation thoughts.Xu holds the Three Beauty Principle and he mainly emphasizes the subjectivity and creativity of the translator.Thus,his translation style is flexible and elegant,concise,and meaningful.However,Sun puts the original poem in an important place comparatively,he emphasizes to translate the meaning in a simple word or a specific sentence accurately and he preserves the allusions in the original poem.Thus,his translation style is rigorous and detailed,profound,and of cultural connotation.In addition,external factors such as historical and cultural context,sponsors,and publish house also have a certain influence on the translator’s style.Sun translated Li Bai’s poems in the early 1980 s,and his descendants compiled and published it after his death.The orientation of the whole book is to memorize Sun Dayu.Xu’s translation was completed in the new century.He himself participated in the writing of the preface and the publication of the book,and his sponsors also participated in the appreciation of the original poem.His translation is easy for readers at home and abroad to understand and is relatively more catering to the market.