A Comparative Study Between Xiao Qian’s Translated Novel And His Original Chinese Novels

As one of the few novelists in China who had works in both Chinese novel composition and foreign novel translation, Xiao Qian believed that composition and translation are closely related. Stood by the principle of “walking with two legs” he never gave up on either “leg” even in his aged life. Xiao Qian had spent days and nights on Fielding and devoted serious efforts on Fielding?s two masterpieces. The thesis selected and compared The Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild?s Chinese version translated by Xiao Qian and his original Chinese novel as objects, trying to discover the features of Xiao Qian?s translated language through the corpus analysis method by comparing The Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild?s Chinese version translated by Xiao Qian and his own original Chinese novels. Since translation is an activity based on the source language, the original English version of The Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild is also taken into account in this thesis. By comparing with The Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild?s English version, the thesis also attempts find the cause and factor attributed to the differences during translation process.As one of the representative Beijing-style novel writers, Xiao Qian used quite amount of North China dialect in his composition while in his translation, he employed more borrowed words and words with exotic feelings. In addition, compared with his composition, the functional words especially conjunctions and pronouns in his translation are much more in his translation. More surprisingly the Europeanization product of adjective + personal pronouns structure are used a few times in Xiao?s composition but has no hit in his translation, compared with which the four-character idioms containing Chinese characteristics are used much more frequently in his translation.Firstly, the thesis explored the difference between Xiao Qian?s translation and composition from lexical level. The Standardized Type/Token Ratio(STTR) of Xiao Qian?s translation is smaller than his composition, indicating the flexibility and abundance of his translation is lower than his composition. The lexical density of Xiao?s translation is also lower than his composition, meaning there are less content words and more functional words in Xiao?s translation. It indicates the general lexical feature of simplification in translated novel. By decreasing the quantity of content words, the translator reduced the informative capacity of translation output, and consequently lowered its difficulty for reader?s better acceptance.Secondly syntactical level. The average sentence length of Xiao?s translation is much longer than his composition. To understand the cause of that, the thesis explained from three aspects of modifiers, parallel structure and clauses. The thesis also found the translation has more English-specific sentences such as POSSIBLE sentence, passive voice and postposition of concessive adverbial clause in Xiao?s translation. Moreover Xiao handled direct speech differently in his translation and composition. The former more went to a moderate direction comparing with the flexibility of the latter.Finally the thesis tries to explore the cause of the above difference from three aspects: the difference between Chinese and English languages, the difference between original English novel and original Chinese novels in style and content, and the translator?s manipulation. the difference between Chinese and English languages in lexicon, syntax and though pattern is the main reason for lower STTR, more frequently using of functional words, passive voice and postposition of concessive adverbial clause in Xiao?s translation; the difference between the original English novel of The Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild and Xiao?s original Chinese novel in style and content is the main cause for more quantity of Beijing-style vocabulary and shorter sentence in Xiao?s composition and more quantity of borrowed words and words with exotic feelings and longer sentence in Xiao?s translation; the translator?s manipulation are mainly reflected by the handling of adjective + personal pronouns structure, four-character idioms and direct speech.