A Corpus-Based Study On Translators’ Styles In The Two English Versions Of Chuan Xi Lu

With the rise of corpus-based translation studies,more and more studies are focusing on translator’s style.Many scholars have carried out a quantitative analysis of translators’ styles of texts by using corpus tools and made some achievements.Chuan Xi Lu is a collection of Wang Yang-ming’s sayings,dialogues and letters,and it is a comprehensive expression of Wang’s School of Mind,which plays an important role in the history of Chinese philosophy.However,the research on the translation of the book is mostly limited to the qualitative analysis of the text,and few scholars has yet delved into the study on its translators’ styles.In view of this,the thesis takes the two complete English versions of Chuan Xi Lu by Frederick G.Henke and Wing-tsit Chan respectively as the research object,and builds a small corpus to examine the personalized efforts made by the two translators to convey the connotation of the original text from the perspective of linguistic and non-linguistic features.Based on the research results,the causes of different translators’ styles are explored.Study on linguistic features covers the analysis of parameters at the lexical,syntactic and textual levels,and study on non-linguistic features includes the selection of the original text,the application of translation strategies,and the analysis of the causes of translators’ styles.It turns out that the translator’s style of Henke is different from that of Chan.In terms of linguistic features,Henke’s version is more diverse in vocabulary and more complex in sentence structures,and he uses personal pronouns more frequently to achieve the cohesion of the text.On the other hand,Chan uses less abundant vocabulary and simpler sentence patterns,and attaches importance to the use of conjunctions to enhance the cohesion between contexts.Compared to Henke’s version,Chan’s version is more readable.In terms of non-linguistic features,Henke,as an American missionary and philosopher,attempts to fully present the historical features of ancient China to western readers,thus mainly adopting the foreignization strategy.However,due to a lack of knowledge of Chinese language and culture,there are multiple mistranslations in his version.As a Chinese American scholar,Chan has a strong awareness of cultural differences,and he primarily adopts the foreignization strategy,too.Because of his profound knowledge of Chinese and western cultures,he is able to interpret various cultural information correctly.When dealing with philosophical concepts,due to the different philosophical systems between China and the West,there is almost no equivalents in western culture.Therefore,both translators mainly adopt the domestication strategy.Henke uses multiple terms to express the same concept,in order to elucidate its rich connotation from various angles;Chan translates them consistently,so that readers can realize that they are actually the same concepts when reading.In addition,in response to the phenomenon of cultural vacancy,the two translators use the technique of translation compensation respectively.The research results of this thesis can serve as a reference for both the scholars of translation criticism and the general readers in their study and understanding of the two English versions of Chuan Xi Lu.The thesis is also an attempt and exploration to combine corpus-based research with translation criticism activities.It is hoped that the study can provide a reference for the application of other classic corpora,and further promote the development and perfection of translation criticism research.