A Comparative Analysis Of Translators’ Translation Styles Of Two Versions Of Luotuo Xiangzi

Lao She is one of the most well-known writers of Chinese modern literature and iscalled People’s Artist. The most famous work of his is Luotuo Xiangzi, which has beentranslated into17foreign languages and has contributed much to the spread of Chineseculture and the communications between Chinese and foreign cultures. This thesisresearches the translators’ styles of the two English versions of Luotuo Xiangzi (ShiXiaoqing’s version and Howard Goldblatt’s version) and compares them in order to findthe unique style of each translator’s when they translate the same source text. This thesishas a great realistic meaning to the studies and practices of great works’ translations.This thesis combines quantitative study with qualitative study. Quantitative studyconcerns that by adopting corpus-based methodology this thesis collects objective andauthentic data of the chosen language materials, which provide the qualitative study with asolid basis. Three corpora are compiled based on the four chapters of each translationselected randomly, that is, Chapter1, Chapter9, Chapter15, and Chapter20. Thenannotations are conducted on the levels of word choices, sentence structures, rhetoric andaesthetic preferences. After that, collect the statistics about the annotations with the aid ofConcordance300and Excel. Then under the guidance of one of functional translationtheories, that is, text type theory, undertake qualitative study. According to the text typetheory, the assessment or translation of a version should begin with the determination ofwhich text type it belongs to. Next the translator should understand the original versionand the ultimate goal of its translation. By analyzing the statistics of the two versions, thisthesis finds out the different language tendencies and stylistic features of the twotranslations and discovers the translators’ different styles in literary translations， analyzessome translation strategies the two translators adopt while translating, and explains thereasons why they hold different styles.This thesis finds out that Shi’s version is of simple style and easy to understand. Thelanguage shows Chinese tendency. Goldblatt’s version is appreciable as an artistic work.The language shows western tendency. Shi can understand the implied meanings of the original work and express them in simple way, while Goldblatt uses more diversifiedwords to reproduce the artistic features of the original work. This thesis finds out thatmany factors influence the style of a translator, such as translator’s translation purpose,his/her cognitive ability, personality, the choice of translated text, experience in translationpractices and etc.