Multi-dimensional Comparative Study Of The Translation Features Of Four Versions Of Shuihu Zhuan

In light of theories of corpus linguistics, contrastive linguistics, functionallinguistics, stylistics and information theory, the dissertation probes into thetranslation features of four versions of Shuihu Zhuan from both the macro and themicro levels with a multi-dimensional comparative approach. Based on self-builtShuihu Zhuan Chinese-English parallel corpus, it tries to answer the following fivequestions:(1) What features of translational languages do the four versions reflect?Specifically, what are the features on the use of words and the chunks? What are thereasons for the formation of such language features?(2) How do the four translators cope with the source text in the sentence level?What translation strategies have they adopted doing their exertion?(3) How do the four translators handle the source text at the textual level? Howdo they restructure the original and what translation strategies does the reconstructionimply？(4) To what extent do key words analysis and key domains analysis of the fourversions reveal their translation features？(5) As the actual language behavior distinction between the characters in differentversions, what are the relationships between the features and their value orientation?The paper is divided into six chapters aiming to find the answers to thesequestions and explore the translation features of the four versions.The first chapter is the introduction, and it describes the background andsignificance of this study, the research contents and methods as well as the frameworkof the paper.The second chapter summarizes the actuality of Shuihu Zhuan C-E translationresearch with the existing problems. The author first reviews the researches of Englishtranslations of Shuihu Zhuan in recent decades. According to the versions involved, itis divided into two categories: one version and one-odd version. Based on thefollowing two categories, the advantages and disadvantages of all the previous studies are put forward. Therefore, it is necessary and important to conduct the parallelcorpus-based work. This is because parallel corpus-based paradigm enablesresearchers to conduct quantitative and qualitative analysis from both the macro andmicro levels. Thus, its finding will be scientific and objective. In addition, putting thefour versions into the consideration, on the one hand, will expand the research horizon;on the other hand, the deeper contrasts can be better to reveal the features of eachtranslation.Chapter three focuses on the building of Shuihu Zhuan Chinese-English parallelcorpora, including the working procedure, the choices and processing of the texts, thealignment of the paragraphs and sentences and the annotation of the corpora. It gives abrief introduction of the corpora and the concordancing tools which are used in thepaper. At the end of the chapter, the parallel corpus-based research paradigm ispresented.The fourth chapter is devoted to the macro study of the translation features of thefour versions. With the help of the parallel corpora, comparable corpora and referencecorpus and adoption of the approach of corpus linguistics, the paper conducts acomparative study of the four translations in the dimensions of word frequency, words,chunk, sentence pairs, discourse, key words, key domains and similarity, so as tograsp the translation features at the corresponding levels. For example, the features ofthe words and chunks, the features of the translators’ comprehension and restructureof sentences, the underlying mechanism for progressing the texts, the relationshipbetween the four translations and its keywords and key domains.The findings of this chapter are as follows:(1) Word frequencies shows that the top words in Jackson’s version, Shapiro’sversion and Dent-Young’s version are the same word the, but the top word of Pearl’sversion is and. Statistics find that there is a significant difference between Pearl’s andthe other three’s in the use of the word and. The same finding is conformed by usingthe reference corpus of Pearl’s China-related theme novel, Good Earth Trilogy, inwhich the top word is also and. Therefore, it is concluded that whether her novels or translation are characterized by the use of word and. In addition, the overuse of and isone of the factors which leads to long sentence. The next chapter confirms thishypothesis. Finally, compared with the TEC corpus, Jackson’s translation is closer tothe translation language, the other three translations are similar, slightly different fromthe translation language.(2) Lexical Features include four aspects, namely, lexical density, frequencyparameters, the type/token ratio, the mean sentence length, the unique words. Lexicaldensity analysis finds that Shapiro’s translation has the highest one, followed byDent-Young’s, Jackson’s and Pearl’s. Four versions’ lexical densities are all less thanthat of the original English text. Except Shapiro’s, the other three translations’ lexicaldensity are all lower than that in the previous study, which shows that the threeversions take on the features of the translational language. As lexical density isregarded as the symbol of the amount of information, it can be concluded thatShapiro’s enjoys the highest information, while Pearl’s have the lowest information;the survey of frequency parameters shows that the number, the cumulative proportion,the repetition rate of high frequency words and the ratio of high frequency wordsversus low frequency words are all the highest in her translation. This, on the onehand, clearly proves that Pearl tends to use high frequency words, which are mainlynominal ones; on the other hand, it also confirms the above conclusion that Pearl’ shas the lowest lexical density. Similarly, Shapiro’s highest lexical density is alsoconfirmed. In addition, the four versions share the same feature that high frequencywords enjoy the high proportion, even higher than those of the previous studies.Besides, the repetition rate of high frequency words is high too. All lexical featureslend support to the hypothesis of simplification of the translated texts.In standard type/token ratio (STTR), the highest one is Shapiro’s, followed byDent-Young’s, Jackson’s and Pearl’s. This shows that Shapiro’s tends to be rich inword choice while Pearl’s is fixed and monotonous. In this point, the finding supportsboth the core patterns of lexical use and the conclusion of the lexical density analysis.Furthermore, the four versions’ STTRs are all less than the original ones. The fact is consistent with the simplification hypothesis in word use. That’s to say, translatednovels tend to use less words while original ones tends to use more words.Consequently, the four translations share the distinct features of translated texts.As for the mean sentence length (MSL), the longest one is Pearl’s, followed byDent-Young’s, Shapiro’s and Jackson’s, of which the longest one is nearly as twice asthe shortest. In addition, the MSL of each version is significantly greater than that ofthe original text, which shows that they are all close to the translated texts. One reasonfor the long sentences in Pearl’s lies to her use too many and in sentences. Thisconfirms the findings of the frequency analysis.(3) Chunks, with the five-word as the representative, finds that Pearl’s are mainlyorganizational ones, aiming to organize the discourse structure, to realize thediscourse acts, to express the relationship between the meaning and the logic, toreveal the direction of information flow. By strengthening the cohesion and coherenceof the text, this contributes a lot to the formation of a organic and complete one. Thesechunks help readers to read. Jackson’s is mainly made up of stance chunks. Thesekinds of chunks convey people’s evaluation, attitude, suggestion or warning. Most ofthem appear in the dialogues with the purpose to advance the development of the plot.Shapiro’s is identical to Pearl’s, with propositional chunks as the main type.Dent-Young’s, however, is mainly of the propositional ones. They consist of temporaland spatial chunks, with the joint purpose to make the story develop.(4) Sentence pair involves the choice and operation of translation unit. Theanalysis of the Chinese-English sentence alignment type reveals that Dent-Young’sversion respects the original while the other tends to regroup or paraphrase theoriginal, with Jackson’s as the most free one. This conclusion is based on the statisticsof the Chinese-English1:1sentence pair type. In comparison with the other three, thetype2:1in Pearl’s is far more. She frequently uses and as a way to form longsentences, which, in turn, confirms that her version possesses long sentences. Besides,no translators translated all the original, of which, Pearl finished the most, followedby Shapiro, Dent-Young and Jackson. This indicates the translators’ subjective choice. (5) The discourse dimensional study finds that four translations develop throughdialogues to advance the texts. In addition, the factor time ranks the second in all theversions, of which Pearl’s is the most, followed by Jackson’, Dent-Young’s andShapiro’s. This indicates that the change of time and the passage of time is also animportant means to develop the text. For Pearl’s, both dialogue and time account foralmost the same proportion. Though the place factor is less in all the four versions, itstill accounts for a large proportion in Pearl’s. The conclusion can be made that Pearl’sdevelops with dialogues, time and place, with the former as the main one and thelatter the subordinate one. In contrast, the other three develop with primary dialoguesand secondary time.(6) Key words analysis reveals that the key noun words in four translationsbasically are the names of key figures in the novel, like Song Jiang, Wu Yong, Li Kui.In Dent-Young’s and Shapiro’s translations these names are replaced with thecorresponding nicknames. The widespread uses of nicknames rather than the namesare their major features. Key verb words include the common displacement verbs, thereporting verbs, with the latter as their differences. Moreover, the key words cloudscan find the word Song lies in the center while word and is located in the center ofPearl’s and Sung(Song) beside it. This again confirms the lexical feature of Pearl’s. Inaddition, there are many personal pronouns in the key word list, which is a feature ofnovel. In dialogue, these words reflect the interaction and identity between thecharacters. Negative keywords, or the underuse words show a common feature of thefour translated texts.(7) Cluster Analysis of the four translations shows that Shapiro’s and Dent-Youngshare the highest similarity while Pearl’s and Dent-Young’s have the least similarity,sandwiched with Jackson’s and Shapiro’s, Jackson’s and Dent-Young’s, Jackson’s andPearl’s, Pearl’s and Shapiro’s. The similarities or differences among the four versioncan be explained from the translators ’ strategies or their translation methods.The fifth chapter examines micro translation features of the four translations,which can be viewed as a way to supplement and deepen Chapter four’s macro research. It includes the survey of the high frequent word take, the comparative studyof the chapter title translation, the discourse marker translation, typical verbtranslation and swearword translation.The findings of this chapter are as follows:(1) Four translators all use the most common colligation and the correspondingtypical collocations of the verb take.(2) In chapter title translation, Dent-Young uses the free translation method withthe heroic couplet poetry style, which better corresponds to the characteristics of theoriginal antithesis. Pearl basically uses word for word translation method, formingphysical mapping with the original; Jackson mainly paraphrases the original, and histranslation is relatively simple, but the key meaning is clearly conveyed; Shapiro’stranslations are mostly the literal ones, and they are able to retain the originalantithesis form and the meaning is fully conveyed.(3) The beginning discourse marker huà shuō in the original all are translated intoIT IS SAID by Pearl; however, Jackson and Shapiro nearly remove the markers andneglect them. Dent-Young almost translates all the markers with various translationsand literary flavor without affecting the English wording. These various expressionsserve the pragmatic function of introducing the topic; end Marker qiě tīng xià huí fēnjiě in the original text has one fixed translation in Pearl’s and Shapiro’s respectively.Jackson, in most cases, turns a blind eye to them and does not translate them. Incomparison, Dent-Young always translates them according to their different contexts.(4) As the translation of reporting verb dào, Pearl renders few differenttranslations; Jackson usually changes the direct quotation in the original text intoindirect speech. Shapiro’s translation is rich and varied. Applying the semanticprosody theory to evaluating the translations of powerful verb nuò and diān, theresearch finds that Shapiro’s translations are usually text-oriented andmeaning-function-oriented. They fully express the hidden semantic prosody; therefore,they are appropriate. At the same time, Pearl’s, Jackson’s and Dent-Young’s show theirindividual characteristics. (5) The survey of the translations of swearword sī shows that Pearl’s are basicallyneutral; Jackson’s are also almost neutral. Both of the two translators sometimesneglect some. So they take on the tendency of sanitation of swearwords. Conversely,Shapiro and Dent-Young tend to express it with emotional and abusive words.Compared to Shapiro’s, Dent-Young’s translations are richer, even containing stronglyderogatory words. Comparative study of the translations of diǎo shows that Pearl’s arefixed, and Jackson mostly omits them without translation. Shapiro’s and Dent-Young’sare varied in most occasions, primarily representing the speaker’s abuse, anger,resentment and contempt or speaker ’s curse, boredom, surprise, and emphasis.The sixth chapter is the conclusion of the dissertation. It summarizes the mainfindings of the present study. Importantly, four implications for translation study andpractice are drawn, and they are as follows:(1) In word level, four versions share the feature of "simplification", whichmeans that the few high frequency words make up more than half of the text (here,even if closed words are excluded, the rest open words also have a great proportion,such as words come, go, etc.) Therefore, it is very important to grasp the highfrequency words and priority should be given to using them in translation, especiallytheir common colligations and typical collocations.(2) Sentence pair study reveals that one to one for Chinese to English pattern topsin the pairs, which clearly shows that the translation is basically based on the unit ofsentence. So with the consideration of the discourse, it’s an appropriate choice tomake the sentence as the translation unit.(3) Dialogues, time and space constitute the clues for discourse progress, ofwhich time and space changes are a reliable reference for the translators to find. Sowhen dealing with the fiction translation from Chinese into English and breaking thelong paragraph into short ones, the translator should take time and space symbols intothe consideration as clues.(4) Parallel corpus provides linking bilingual or multilingual words, phrases withauthentic and enough context. These information and materials may play a crucial role in compiling high-quality translation dictionary.At the end, it points out the area where further research may be carried out.