| As a well-known Chinese writer, Lao She himself admitted that he was good atwriting, but few people know that he was also a good translator and his translationsare widely appreciated. However, studies on Lao She’s translation are rarely seeneither at home or abroad, thus becoming a great weakness in translation studies.The definition and recognition of a translator’s style have been a highlyconcerned research topic for long. Based on the results of previous studies, the authorof this thesis defines the translator’s style as the language style outstanding in his/hertranslations as different from that of the original text, of the target language in general,of other translators and of his/her own writings in the target language (usually his/hermother language). The author also holds that a translator’s style is normally closelyrelated to the way he/she adopts translation strategies. As to the recognition ormeasurement of language style, previous stylistic studies may provide us with somemodes consisting of a number of parameters, on the basis of which, the author selectssome parameters as indicators and forms a working mode of style recognition to suitthe purpose of this study.This study takes Lao She’s translation of Bernard Shaw’s The Apple Cart asobject and employs corpus approach to combine qualitative and quantitative analysis.We use the above-mentioned mode to recognize Lao She’s translation style and thenbriefly analyze the cause of its formation. Moreover, this study takes the languagestyle of the original text and that of Lao She’s writing work (Lao She’s own style) asreferences. Our research questions are as follows:1. What kind of style is reflected in Lao She’s translation, when compared withthe original text of The Apple Cart? Are there any significant differences in dataunder relevant parameters between the original text and translated version of TheApple Cart? a. Do the translated version and original work have similar Standard Type/TokenRatio (STTR)?b. Do they have the same amount of sentences, and similar average sentencelength?c. Is the translation correspondent with the original text on sentence level?d. Are the connectives in the translated version similar with those in the originaltext in terms of category and frequency?f. Does the distribution of punctuations vary significantly in the original text andLao She’s version?2. How does Lao She deal with the relation between his own translation styleand original author’s style in his translation of The Apple Cart? The selectedinvestigation points are as follows:a. Does Beijing dialect, which is the main characteristic in Lao She’s writingworks, appear in his translation?b. How dose he render the rhythm of the little verse in the play?c. How dose he handle the expressions peculiar to different cultures, say,idioms?To have the above-listed questions resolved, we compile a small-scaled parallelcorpus with English and Chinese version of The Apple Cart as texts, and collectrelevant data with the help of Antconc3.2.1. In addition, we select Lao She’s workTeahouse as the representative of his writing texts and compile it into corpus. Wecompare it with the translated version of The Apple Cart so as to make his style as atranslator more salient. The data are classified into two categories according to theirdifferent sources: data from main text and that from sub-text. The former coversdifferent levels, like phonological, lexical, syntactic, textual and rhetorical levels,whereas the latter mainly comes from foot notes used in the translated version of TheApple Cart. The following are the results we have obtained after data collection andanalysis: 1. On phonological level, Lao She used a Chinese-style meter called “meter ofunevenness and balance(参差均衡律)” to replace “iambic pentameter”, i.e.displaying the rhyme in a different way. In addition, to create an ideal rhythmic effect,Lao She even changed the sequence of original lines. Hence we believe that Lao Shegave priority to rhythmic beauty by giving play to subjective initiative, rather thanstrictly following the format of the original verse.2. On lexical level, the richness of words of the translated version is higher thanthat of the original text, but lower than the writing text, which can be attributed to theinfluence of the original text to some extent. In appellation translation, we find hetended to use traditional Chinese appellation. With respect to idiom translation, literaltranslation and free translation of his own style were both employed in Lao She’sversion of The Apple Cart.3. On syntactical level, it is found that the average sentence length isconspicuously longer than that of the original text and Lao She’s writing text, whichis also assumed to be largely influenced by the English version. In terms of thealignment of sentences in two versions, this study finds, except for73modifications,the rest2277sentences are corresponded with the English version. Such a high rate ofalignment can be understood as Lao She’s pursuing original style on sentence level,while the73modifications reflect that Lao She stressed the rule of segmentingChinese sentences and his own habit of using sentences.4. On textual level, the connectives used in Lao She’s version of The Apple Cartare very close to those in the original text in both types and numbers. To keepChinese way of expressing things, the connectives for coordination relations in LaoShe’s translation are much less than those in the original text; we also find that theproportion of comma on the total number of punctuations in Lao She’s translation islarger than others. Through analysis of examples, we find it can be attributed to LaoShe’s understanding of the original text and his habit of segmenting sentences.5. On sub-text level, observing the use of foot notes is conducive for us tounderstand Lao She’s ideology during translation. The four types of foot notes usedin the translation of The Apple Cart can manifest Lao She’s respect for the original text, its author, and his intention of taking readers into consideration duringtranslation.All in all, Lao She’s translation strategy can be summed up as giving priority toliteral translation while taking the use of Chinese language into consideration.Accordingly, Lao She’s unique language style is formed, i.e. displaying his ownlanguage features while trying to keep close to the original work.After the collection of data and corresponding analysis, the author of this thesisalso makes a preliminary investigation into the cause of the formation of Lao She’stranslation style. We find that his growing and educational background,self-cultivation in literature, the status as a member of the “interactive culture” andhis views on translation play indispensable roles in this regard.In general, this study investigates Lao She’s translation style on the basis ofprevious achievements and the selected style recognition mode. Hopefully, theintroduction of Lao She’s views on translation and the illustration of this translationwork can be contributive to win him a deserved position in translation history, and hisliterature translation strategies will be recognized by and known to many morepeople. |
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