Translator’s Style Embodied In The Translation Of Dress And Personaladornment:A Corpus-based Comparison On Two Translated English Versions Of Hong Lou Meng

Hong Lou Meng is the epitome of China’s traditional culture,in which the dress and personal adornment culture is an important part.As for the translation studies of the DPA text of HLM,most of them choose some descriptions in one translation as the research object,while less research focuses on the comparative study of the two full versions.Based on multiple scholars’ interpretation of the translator’s style,this study aims to study the style differences between the Yangs’ translation and Hawkes’ translation the of DPA texts by corpus-based research methods.This paper focuses on the differences between the original versions of the two translations,selects all the DPA texts in 120 chapters of HLM,establishes a shared parallel corpus,and makes a comparative study of the translation styles of the two versions from two aspects:linguistic features and non-linguistic features,using qualitative and quantitative methods.According to the analysis,the reasons that may lead to the differences are explained from the perspective of the translator’s internal and external elements.The results indicate: From the linguistic level,Hawkes’ translation has a higher number of types and tokens as well as a higher ratio.Both versions prefer words with4-8 letters,but Hawkes’ version shows a preference for words with 1-2 letters and words with more than 10 letters.Nouns are mostly used in both versions because the core words of clothing are all nouns,but the proportion of nouns used in the Yangs’ version is higher,and the proportion of adjectives and prepositions in Hawkes’ version is higher.Hawkes’ translation uses more and longer sentences to translate DPA texts.From the non-linguistic level,a combination of domestication and foreignization strategies is found in both versions,but the translation tendency is different.The Yangs’ translation favors foreignization while Hawkes’ translation uses domestication more.As for the translation techniques related to sentences,both versions use a variety of divisions,while the Yangs’ version tends to be consistent with the original,and Hawkes’ version uses more sentences to translate the original sentence.The differences between the two versions are closely related to the translator’s mother tongue,translation purpose,and the social and cultural background of the translators.It is hoped that the results of this study will enrich the study of costume translation and translator’s style in HLM,and provide help for future translation practice and translation teaching.