A Corpus-based Study On The Translator’s Style In The Four English Versions Of Bian Cheng

Traditional translation studies put more emphasis on the absolute faithfulness to the source text,so translator’s style is ignored.With the rise of descriptive translation studies,translator’s style starts to receive more attention,providing a new perspective for translation studies.With the aid of corpus tools and the theory of translator’s style,in this thesis,four comparable corpora are built,and a comparative study on Shen Congwen’s Bian Cheng is conducted from lexical,syntactical and textual levels,compared with BNC Baby Fiction,to explore the characteristics of translators’ styles between the four English versions and the reasons behind their differences.Findings are as follows:in Hahn’s version,(1)words are the easiest and the least diverse.(2)Sentences are long and difficult.(3)Personal and demonstrative references,conjunctions,and substitutions are in the third place,making her version more difficult than original English fiction.In Ching’s version,(1)words are easy and short.(2)Average sentence length is the longest,conjunctions rank the first and sentences are the most complicated.Punctuation marks is more than Hahn and the source text.(3)The number of personal references and conjunctions is the largest,but demonstrative references are the fewest.In Yang’s version,(1)words are the richest.(2)With the shortest mean sentence length the fewest conjunctions and the largest number of punctuation marks,her translation is easy.(3)Personal,demonstrative references and conjunctions rank the third.The number of substitutions is the largest.With the lowest readability score,her translation is much easier than the original English fiction.In Kinkley’s version,(1)lexical density is the highest,and average word length is the longest.(2)Word diversity,mean sentence length and punctuation marks are all in the third place.(3)Personal references,conjunctions and substitutions all rank the first but the number of demonstrative references is the largest.The possible reasons are that,as non-professional translators,Hahn is not familiar with Chinese culture so her translation is less diverse in words,while Ching Ti is not proficient in English,thus adopting numerous complex sentences;Native translator as Yang is,she is deeply influenced by her translation purposes and social background;Kinkley is a sinologist and expert at Shen Congwen studies,so his translation is the most informative.The findings contribute to a better understanding of the four translators’ styles and translation characteristics and provide data and examples for the study on the translator’s style.It will also enrich English translation research on Bian Cheng.