A Study Of Two Chinese Versions Of Shakespearean Drama-based On The Quantitative Method

Based on theories of contrastive linguistics, corpus translation studies and translator’sstyle research, this dissertation, with Liang Shiqiu and Zhu Shenghao’s translations ofShakespeare’s four plays Hamlet, King Lear, Othello and Romeo and Juliet as comparativeobjects, aims to probe into the language features and translators’ style of the two Chineseversions. With the parallel corpus model, the author launches a comprehensive quantitativeand qualitative research concerning many factors as lexical density, length of sentences,characteristic words, high frequency words, special sentence patterns as “bèi” structure,“shì…de” structure as well as cultural images. The research also involves outer languagematerials such as letters, biography, literature criticism, preface and postscript, in order toanalyze and organize the elements that influence and thus lead to the translators’ selectionof translation strategy and method. The fundamental objectives are to enrich the methodsof corpus-based translator/work studies, to verify the generally accepted conclusions of thetwo translators’ style and to find the yet unnoticed and unperceived characteristics of theirtranslation works.This dissertation consists of the following four parts: introduction, documentaryreview, empirical investigations and conclusion.In the introduction, the rationale of the research, the purposes and main contents ofthe research as well as innovations of the research are stated. The author’s conducting ofthis corpus-based research of the two Chinese versions of Shakespearean drama ismotivated by the current shortage of this kind of quantitative study. A brief account of thecriteria by which the four tragedies are chosen as the language material is also made. Suchfactors as material’s popularity, material’s scale and the extent to which the material maycontribute to this research are considered. The reason for adopting the three perspectives—“musicalization”,“Europeanization”,“target language orientation”—to develop the studyis also explained in this part.The documentary review part brings about a brief summary of the literature resourcesas Shakespearean drama and its translation in China. Among all the Chinese translationworks, Liang Shiqiu and Zhu Shenghao’s versions are the most popular and influentialones. The two translators’ life experiences, their translation motivations, their translationoutlooks as well as the publishing and spreading of their versions are also reviewed in thispart. Meanwhile, for the basic methodology of this research—corpus translation studies, itsconcept, its research contents and its status quo are also discussed in this section. To begin the empirical research, the author first conducts a basic quantitativeinvestigation, the results of which are:1). Zhu’s total number of tokens, the type/token ratio(TTR) and the mean sentencelength(MSL) are all higher than that of Liang’s, thus the conclusion that the diction ofZhu’s version is richer can be drawn.2). The lexical densities of the two versions are about the same, with Liang’s version’sbeing a little bit higher. Also, they both outnumber the Chinese original works whencompared, showing that these two versions provide more information and demonstratehigher lexical difficulty.3). The frequencies of personal pronouns w�' and nǐ of Liang Shiqiu and ZhuShenghao are higher than that of the compared Chinese original works by a large degree.In the “top20frequent word lists”, nín can only be spotted in Zhu’s list, the using of whichshows his much consideration of his target language readers.4). In the “unique word lists” of the two versions, there are more conjunctions inLiang’s than in Zhu’s. Moreover, the nouns, especially the title nouns, are different, servingto judge whether the translator is source-language-orientated or target-language-orientated.After looking into the two translation works from the perspective of musicalization,the author finds that the233lines of “ten-character-poem” in Zhu’s version are verydistinctive; they are in uniform structure and well organized both in rhyme and tempo.Other findings are as follows:1). As far as the usage of rhyme types is concerned, Zhu Shenghao demonstrated morevariety and flexibility: there are alliteration, internal rhyme and rhymes across the otherlines. However, due to his emphasis on poetic forms, Zhu Shenghao sometimes inevitablyfailed to convey the exact semantic meaning of the original text. Another point that must bemade is that Zhu did not employ rhyme in his translation according to the appearance ofrhyme in the original text. On the other hand, Liang Shiqiu faithfully rhymed each endword of his translation whenever there is rhyme in the source text. The amount of therhyme units was also the same as Shakespeare’s original work.2). In order to achieve rhythmical effect of his translation, Zhu utilized varioustechniques such as arranging symmetries and paralleling of words by their meanings,putting the same number of meaning-based units between the lines, adjusting syllables byrepetition of the single character and adding function words as zháo, de, liǎo, ah etc.3). When intonation is concerned, neither of the two versions is obviously observed ashighlighting the musicality of their translations by alternatively using Chinese tone of pīng and zè. Under comparison, Zhu paid more attention to avoid the repetition of the same tone.He also preferred pīng tones to make his words sound sonorous, bold, exciting andenergetic. On the other hand, Liang used more zè tones, enabling his readers to enjoy thenatural, modest, neat and tender characteristics of his words.The discussion of the differences of the two versions from the perspective ofEuropeanization leads to the conclusions that:1). The total frequencies of “bèi” structure being observed in Liang’s version andZhu’s version are respectively315and147, with the former2.14times more than the latter.In addition, Liang’s usage of “bèi” structure is more diverse and flexible both semanticallyand pragmatically.2). For the “N de V” structure,57and67cases in Liang Shiqiu and Zhu Shenghao’sworks are observed. When compared with the original text, the phenomenon of theemployment of this structure’s not being much influenced by the original text is noticed.3). When analyzing the “shì…de” structure, the author observes that it was adopted byLiang Shiqiu in209occasions,1.31times more than it was adopted by Zhu Shenghao.4). Liang Shiqiu used up to2.12times more prepositions at the beginning of thesentences to indicate time than Zhu Shenghao. The amounts of their usage are70and33.5). The research into the collocation of numeral yī and different classifiers as gě,zh�'ng and wěi shows that there are1172cases of usage with69different classifiers inLiang’s version, while1612cases in Zhu’s version. To summarize, Liang Shiqiu’s versiondemonstrates more characteristics of Europeanization than Zhu Shenghao’s.The investigation focused on the degree of “target language orientation” reveals that:1). Literal translation is still the main strategy that the two translators employed whenthey rendered the cultural images. However, a slightly greater amount is observed inLiang’s version. The amount of cases in which the method “literal translation with note”was used in Liang’s version accounts much more in the total amount of the studied casesthan in Zhu’s. The proportion of the former is29%while that of the latter is just3.3%. Thephenomenon of implicitation of images is very obvious in Zhu’s version, accounting for upto35%of the total. In addition, there are many Chinese cultural images such as tóng shìcāo gě and rén miàn táo huā in Zhu’s version, manifesting themselves as one of themeasures the translator adopted to enhance the comprehension and appreciation of thetarget language readers. The cultural images, chosen from Hamlet, includes91imagesconcerning animal, plant, color, nature, god and idiom.2).The results of the survey of conjunction&connector show that①There are948 cases of conjunction hé, jí, bǐng qiě and gēn as connectors to indicate coordination inLiang’s version, the corresponding number of Zhu’s version is888.②Among the32examples of which time indicators are under observation, Liang Shiqiu represented8ofthem while Zhu did5. Implicitation of time connector makes up71%of the formertranslation examples and86%of the latter.③There are6cases (12%) of implicitation ofdisjunctive conjunction “but” in Liang’s50examined translation sentences. Zhu’simplicitation tendency is more obvious, with his14(28%) cases.3). As for the personal pronouns, there are altogether1355more in Zhu’s version thanin Liang’s, they account for6.77%and6.61%of the total words respectively. Theproportion of both texts is lower than that of the original. The occasion in which personalpronouns were omitted involve nominative, objective and possessive cases.4) In the research of “four-character phraseology”,663cases in Liang’s version and724in Zhu’s are found. One of the reasons for Zhu’s version’s exceeding is that he addedfunction words to adjust the syllables and thus was able to achieve the parallel andorderliness which are the main pragmatic function of “four-character phraseology”.In the conclusion, on the basis of the elements that served to influence the formationof translator/work style, the author processes the two works’ style that presented in theexamined language material. To conclude, Liang’s version is more Europeanized, a traitthat is demonstrated mainly in the translation of the “běi” structure, preposition and“shì…de” structure. The characteristic of clearer Europeanization bears his intention ofrepresenting the original text with more authenticity and his faithfulness to the originalwriter. It also verifies his translation motivation “to give back the real Shakespeare to thereaders.” On the other hand, Zhu’s version is more musicalized and more target-language-oriented, a trait that is in accordance with the generally accepted comments of the researchfield. His version is more suitable for stage performance and reading out. After all, hismotivation of translating Shakespearean drama was “to educate and enlighten the masses”and “to correct the present society from its ill practices”. In the end of the conclusion part,the limitation and the future perspective of this research are also included.The methods employed and the conclusions drawn in the research will contributesomewhat to enriching the corpus-based study strategy of translator’s/work style,providing reference for the later-comers to retranslate Shakespearean plays and providingclassic translation examples for translation teaching.