A Case Study Of Translator Style

Corpus-based study on translator’s style is one of the important topics of Corpus-based Translation Studies. This type of approach to translator style was first put forward in 2000 by Mona Baker, the founder of “Translational English Corpus”. It is different from the general translation stylistic research which focuses on the source text’s or the original author’s style. Instead, the corpus-based approach considers one or several translators’ translated texts as a whole(in corpus), and conducts statistical analysis of the type/token ratio, average sentence length, lexical density, and many other linguistic features. Corpus-based approach to translator’s style explores the translators’ unique language features, and aims to find out the consistent and regular language patterns in translation. Taking Luotuo Xiangzi as a case study, this thesis compares and analyzes Goldblatt’ and Shi Xiaojing’s styles reflected in their translation of Luotuo Xiangzi. First, the study investigates the preferred language patterns of the two translators based on their versions. Second, it analyzes how Goldblatt and Shi deal with thought presentation and their strategies in translating culture-loaded expressions. Based on the self-compiled parallel corpus, this study is conducted by combining quantitative analysis with qualitative discussions.It is found that there are differences between the two translators’ linguistic preferences. The average sentence length in Goldblatt’s translation is a little higher than that in Shi’s, and one of the reasons lies in the fact that Goldblatt prefers to usesemi-colon to connect independent clauses. Comparing the standard type/token ratio(STTR), it is found that the value of STTR in Corpus of Translation by Goldblatt(CTG)is lower than in Corpus of Translation by Shi Xiaojing(CTS), which means that Goldblatt’s version shows further lexical simplification. As for the lexical density,there seems little difference between the two translators, but Shi Xiaojing uses more adjectives and adverbs, and there is significant difference in the frequency of using them compared with Goldblatt’s version. This can be verified by analyzing the Keyword lists between the two translators. As for the use of contractions, Goldblatt uses significantly more contractions than Shi. In dealing with the modes of thought presentation, Goldblatt tends to use Free Direct Thought(FDT) while Shi tends to use Free Indirect Thought(FID). When it comes to the translation strategies of culture-loaded expressions, we find that Goldblatt prefers to use foreignization strategy to retain Chinese culture features, especially in his translation of Xiehouyu. Shi adopts foreignization and domestication in a balanced way, and her version enjoys higher readability.To some extent, this study reveals the two translators’ styles in translating one same novel and confirms the feasibility of corpus-based approach to translator style.However, due to limitations of the selected texts, the analysis may not be complete,and this study needs to be further supplemented and improved.