A Study On The Translator's Style Of Shangshu Based On Corpus

Shangshu,which is the ancestor of political books,the source of historical books and the witness of the development history of ancient Chinese civilization,records some important historic events of the Yu,Xia,Shang,Western Zhou,Spring and Autumn periods.It is a mirror of the ancient Chinese society,reflecting various aspects of the Chinese civilization.The translator is the main body of translation activities,shouldering the important task of extending the life and inheriting the thoughts of the original work.Translator's style can give distinct personality to the translated works,and the study of translator's style has gradually aroused the attention of the academia with the rise of corpus translation.The use of corpus provides new ideas and methods for translation research,and makes it possible to quantify the individualized and regular language of diferent translatorsFrom the macro background of corpus translation research,this dissertation first briefly describes ideas related to translator's style,comprehensively and objectively shows the research status and hot spots of translator's style based on the predecessors'research achievements of study,and reviews the recent study,spreading in the west and the translation research of Shangshu.Corpus translation has added a new paradigm to the study of English translation of ancient Chinese classics.It is necessary to study the translator's style of Shangshu based on parallel corpus,which will be helpful for the comprehensive,systematic and scientific study of Shangshu and its English translation.In this context,this dissertation makes an innovative attempt to study the translation of Shangshu establishing a parallel corpus of Chinese and English versions of Shangshu.The creation process of parallel corpus of Shangshu is more complex,selecting the typical versions of different ages and different translators(including James Legge,Bernhard Karlgren,Martin Palmer and Du Rui-qing)as corpora,operating on the corpus,such as inputting,sorting,classifying,tagging,aligning and setting retrieval,especially proofreading corpora word for word and processing the noise of text format to ensure the accuracy of corpora.Chinese and English corpora aligned in sentence level can automatically present the corresponding relationship between the translation with the original text.The establishment of this parallel corpus will provide a physical platform for better research on the English translation of Shangshu,and enhance the validity and reliability of the conclusions of the research on the English translation of Shangshu.Based on the established parallel corpus of Shangshu,this dissertation compares and analyzes the macro-linguistic features of the four versions by means of corpus tools and software,including data statistics and quantitative analysis of the basic features of lexicon,syntax and discourse.The findings are as follows:(1)In terms of word frequency,compared with the first ten words in the English Translation Corpus,six words are the same in Legge's version and Du's version,and seven words in Karlgren's version and Palmer's version.In terms of the number of tokens,Legge's version is the highest,followed by Karlgren's and Du's,and Palmer's is the lowest.All the four translations are longer than the source text and show a tendency of explicitation.Du's version has the highest standard type/token ratio and the most diverse and abundant vocabulary.Legge's version has the lowest lexical density and the most obvious features of explicitation.The average word length of Legge's version,Karlgren's version and Palmer's version is very similar,close to the average word length of English Translation Corpus,while Du's version has the longest average word length,which is relatively difficult.The theme words in the four versions all highlight the themes of the original text.(2)In terms of average sentence length,Legge's version is the longest,while Palmer's version is the shortest.Du's version and Palmer's version reflect the characteristics of the source language,while Legge's version and Karlgren's version tend to be easier to understand and emphasize the expression of information.The sentence length varies greatly and is more diversified in structure in both Karlgren's version and Legge's version.In terms of paragraph length,Karlgren's version and Legge's version are better at sentence breaking and their languages are concise,which is easier for readers to read and understand.In the number of interrogative sentence and exclamatory sentence,Legge's version is far more than that of the other three versions,reproducing the emotions and attitudes of the characters in the original text,and vividly showing their respective images.Legge's version has the highest degree of formal conformity and is more normative or complex,while Du's version has the lowest degree of formal conformity,and its number of functional words is not as much as that of the other three native English translators,which tends to adopt the strategy of foreignization.(3)In terms of readability,reading and understanding difficulty of the four versions is not lower than that of the ordinary English text,and it shows no simplification.By contrast,Palmer's version is more readable and easy to understand.In terms of textual function,the four versions all follow the thematic structure adopted in the original text of Shangshu and try their best to reproduce the information promotion mode of the original text.In contrast,on the basis of the equivalence of meaning with the original text,Legge's version and Palmer's version tend to adjust the sentence information structure and wording appropriately,and use other cohesive devices to enhance discourse coherence.The total number of conjunctions used in Legge's version is the highest,while Palmer's version is the lowest and it is characterized by various types and flexibility.Legge's version and Karlgren's version pay more attention to the cohesion and coherence of the target text,and use more connecting means to show the implicit logic relationship in the original text,which is more in line with English planning habit.The four translators show strong consistency in the transmission of explicit discourse connectives.The most commonly used type of connectives in the four versions is the supplementary connectives,which reflects the cohesion and coherence of English texts.This dissertation analyzes the non-linguistic micro-translation features of Shangshu translation based on parallel corpus,mainly including qualitative research on the translation strategies and methods of idioms,metaphors,characters and culture-frequency words in various versions.Research findings are as follows:(1)In general,Legge and Karlgren inherit faithfulness to the original text when translating idioms,and adopt more literal translation to ensure the accurate transmission of the meaning,content and style of original text,and maintain the appearance of the original text.Karlgren translates some idioms into English idioms with the largest number,and pays attention to retaining the rhetorical forms of the original text.Palmer adopts the highest proportion of free translation among the four versions.Palmer's language is coherent and fluent,and not strictly limited to the literal meaning in most cases,conveying the meaning of idioms in the translation.Du's technique and style are between the first two categories,taking the cultural differences between China and the west into account,giving priority to literal translation,and adopting appropriate methods such as free translation and omission to improve the readability of the translation.(2)The English translation of metaphor in Shangshu is mainly based on literal translation.Translators intend to retain the expression form and cultural connotation of the original metaphor,and try to faithfully reproduce the unique cultural content of the original language,so as to achieve the effect of both spirit and form.Among the four translators,Karlgren pays more attention to literal translation,striving to convey the original meaning accurately and reproduce the unique cultural elements of the source language.Palmer focuses on free translation and conversion,removing the strangeness between cultures and enhancing the readability of the translation.(3)In terms of reshaping the image of Duke of Zhou,Legge and Karlgren translate all the "?" in the original text into implicit reporting verbs.Palmer's version and Du's version have more abundant expressions,and more use of reporting verbs with clear meanings to show the implied semantic content in the context of the original text.The translations of"?“in Legge's version and Karlgren's version,which are patterned,do not change in context or class,while Palmer's version and Du's version express the context connotation of the original text,highlighting the class difference between discourse objects of Duke of Zhou,and accurately showing the "distance" and "respect" between Duke of Zhou and objects of communication.All the four translators tend to use direct quotations to record speech of Duke of Zhou in "its original form",retaining its various features,and accurately keeping the style and expressive power of original language of Duke of Zhou.The translations of the action characteristics of Duke of Zhou in the four versions of Shangshu basically correspond to the literal meaning of the original.Legge's version makes clear the cultural and conceptual information of the action of Duke of Zhou,and the vivid image of loyalty,perseverance and heroism of Duke of Zhou in Du's version is made by means of manifesting the verb meaning.(4)Under the framework of cultural coordination strategy,Legge and Karlgren pay attention to functional equivalence when translating"?",replacing the indigenous information in the culture of the source language with the alien source in the culture of the target language;Du and Palmer pay attention to cultural equivalence and try their best to convey the connotation of traditional Chinese cultural terms.In order to achieve contextual adaptation at the cultural level of the target language,the four translators flexibly use literal translation,free translation and other translation methods,and try their best to use language and cultural images easily understood by westerners to translate "?".The three western translators basically understood the unmarked"?" in the original text as the "virtue" in sense.Most of them adopted literal translation and directly converted the "?"containing the specific concept of culture into the English "virtue".While on the basis of keeping close to the semantic meaning of the original text,Du flexibly uses variation translation retaining the culture of the source language,trying to reproduce the cultural image of the high-frequency word in the source language,so as to increase the readability and comprehensibility of the translation.Based on the text characteristics and strategies of translation,this dissertation makes a detailed statistical analysis,comparison of examples and inductive analysis in the four versions of Shangshu,which reveals the similarities and differences of the four translators'styles.On the whole,James legge's version is mainly literal translation,rigorous and precise,explicit and straightforward,unity of form and spirit.Bernhard Karlgren's version is faithful to the original,smooth in wording,consistent in words and sentences,and keeping the original appearance.Martin Palmer's version is free tranlation,vivid and faithful,concise and fluent,flexible and smooth.Du ruiqing's version is rich in vocabulary,vivid in character,and integration in culture.The differences in translation styles are mainly related to the historical and cultural background,translation motivation and purpose,and translators' identity and accomplishment.The four translators have the common motivation to spread the excellent cultural ideas of China.Despite different historical and cultural backgrounds and different identities and accomplishment of translators,they all take promoting communication between China and the west as their duties on the whole,being faithful to the original as the standard,to convey the spiritual essence of the original,and reproduce the theme and ideological connotation of the original.Overseas translation and introduction of Shangshu is an important means and component of Chinese culture spreading.Based on corpus technology,this dissertation conducts a comprehensive and systematic study of the translator's style of Shangshu,and makes the description of translator's style clearer,more scientific and convincing by adopting the combination of quantitative and qualitative research methods,and it has opened up a new path for translation studies of Shangshu,as well as providing a reference to the creation and application of other classics corpus.