A Corpus-based Study Of Literary Translator's Style

Xi Xiang Ji,written by famous dramatist Wang Shifu in the Yuan Dynasty,is a realism masterpiece of Chinese classical drama, and has a great influence on the creation of fiction and drama that treat love as the subject in later time. Since the first half of the twentieth century, Xi Xiang Ji has been translated into English for many times, extending its popularity among readers abroad. Thus, the comparative study of its different English versions is of great significance to a better understanding of translator's style and the transmission of Chinese classic drama. On the basis of corpus stylistics, this thesis aims to analyze the translator's styles in Xu Yuanchong's English version of Xi Xiang Ji (Romance of the Western Bower) and West & Idema's (The Story of the Western Wing). By comparing the quantitative data drawn from the reference corpus consisting of original English dramas of the same period of time with the data taken from the two translated versions, the thesis makes a qualitative analysis on the styles of translators. The study mainly focuses on the following aspects: first, whether distinguishing features about the rhythm in the translations of Xi Xiang Ji exist or not; second, what the feature of Xi Xiang Ji at the vocabulary level is;third, how Xi Xiang Ji is translated at the sentence level; fourth, how the coherence and performability at the discourse level in the translations of Xi Xiang Ji are achieved. The results show that West & Idema's version features prose translation, therefore it has a high degree of foreignization. In addition,their version uses more verbs than that of Xu's translation and has a higher level of performability. Xu Yuanchong's version pays much attention to the realization of rhythm and has various forms in his translation; in addition to end rhymes, internal rhymes and interlaced rhymes are also used. Thus his version has a high degree of domestication. However, except for using different types of sentences, both translators all make processes of segmentation and merging to Xi Xiang Ji. The findings not only facilitate readers' understanding of the translator's style objectively and directly, but also are of significance to the interpretation of their other translations.