A Corpus-based Comparative Study Of The Chinese Versions Of The Tale Of Genji

The Tale of Genji is the first full-length novel in the world,which represents the peak of Japanese classical literature and has been translated into many languages,occupying an important position in the history of world literature.Lin Wenyue's full translation of The Tale of Genji,the first published Chinese complete version,came into being in Taiwan in 1978,and Feng Zikai's full translation,the first publication of Chinese mainland,was published from 1980 to 1983 in three volumes,and these two versions receive many credits.Then after that in the wave of literary classics retranslation,nearly a dozen of complete Chinese versions of The Tale of Genji appeared consecutively,bringing both popularity and criticism to the academic circle.Corpus-based comparative studies of multiple translations apply the corpus approach to translation studies,providing a new method and path for traditional descriptive translation studies.Therefore,this research constructs a corpus of six Chinese versions of The Tale of Genji,including Feng Zikai's full translation,Lin Wenyue's full translation,Yao Jizhong's full translation,Ye Weiqu and Tang Yuemei's full translation,Yin ZhiJun's full translation,and Zheng Minqin's full translation(hereafter abbreviated as Feng's version,Lin's version,Yao's version,Ye's version,Yin's version and Zheng's version),adopting the corpus method of quantitative analysis and qualitative analysis to investigate the characteristics and similarities of the six Chinese versions from perspectives of vocabulary usage(text length,type-to-token ration and lexical density,reporting verbs,conjunctions,modal particles,and “love-hatred” expressions),average sentence length,tanka translation and text similarity,as well as to discuss the value of literary classics retranslation.The research aims to answer three questions:First,what are the styles and characteristics of the six Chinese versions of The Tale of Genji?Second,what are the similarities and differences in the styles and characteristics of the six Chinese versions?Third,what implications do these similarities and differences have on literary classics retranslation?Major findings of the research are as follows: first,Yao's and Yin's versions use more short sentences and are rather concise,while Ye's,Zheng's and Lin's versions employ more long sentences to produce a continuous feeling of the original Japanese,but they are much lengthier;Lin's version has the fewest reporting verbs,while all the other five use a large number,but Feng's,Zheng's,Yao's and Yin's versions are more classic and formal;Yao's and Yin's versions adopt many high frequency conjunctions,Ye's has the fewest,besides,all the six versions have adopted lots of disjunctive conjunctions,and prefer single character ones,particularly Yao's and Yin's;Lin's translation has the most types and highest frequency of modal particles followed by Ye's,and these two are closer to the tone of Japanese language,while Zheng's includes the fewest;as for “love-hatred” expressions,Yao's and Yin's translations are the richest,while Lin's uses the fewest;Lin has created a new form for translating tanka,while the other five translators have adopted the form of ancient Chinese poetry to translate tanka,but extra meanings may add in to maintain the form.Second,Lin's version has the most obvious differences with the other five versions,and the retranslations appeared after Feng's version are very much similar to Feng's version in language usage and text similarity.Wherein,Feng's,Yao's and Yin's share the most similar variables,even some parts are exactly the same,especially Yao's and Yin's,Ye's and Zheng's translations also have some common factors.Third,Lin's and Feng's versions have their own unique styles and characteristics,but retranslations published in mainland share striking similarities with Feng's.Although Ye's and Zheng's also have some distinctive features,they do not reach Feng's level.All in all,these retranslations fail to achieve the expected standard and have no values.The findings of this current study help to deeply and better understand the styles and characteristics of the six Chinese versions,and also offer significant references to the studies of Chinese translations of The Tale of Genji,comparative studies of corpus-based multiple translations and literary classics retranslation studies.