A Corpus-based Study On The Representation Of The Fictional Speech Style Differences In The Yangs' And Hawkes' Translated Versions Of Hong Lou Meng

Hong Lou Meng is one of the most classic works in Chinese literature.As is well acknowledged,in Hong Lou Meng,all the characters have their distinctive speech styles,which is one of the most important sources of its literary value.Therefore,it is necessary to study the representation of fictional speech style differences in its translations.This study will examine the representation of Wang Xifeng's and Liu Laolao's speech style differences in David Hawkes' and Yang Xianyi&Gladys Yang's translated versions of Hong Lou Meng by building two sets of comparable corpora,which include the corpora of Wang's and Liu's direct speeches in Hawkes' version and the Yangs' version respectively.This study will compare the style parameters of Liu's and Wang's speeches in each translated version,and compare the extent of speech style differences between the two fictional figures in Hawkes' and the Yangs' versions to investigate whether the two versions represent Wang's and Liu's speech style differences and in what aspects such differences are embodied in each version.Based on the results of the above-mentioned explorations,the author also turns to the paratexts,including prefaces of translated texts,interviews as well as academic and critical discourses,to briefly discuss the potential factors that may influence the performance of the two translated versions in different aspects when distinguishing Wang's and Liu's speech styles.The results of this study show that Hawkes' and the Yangs' versions both reveal stylistic differences between Wang Xifeng's and Liu Laolao's speeches to some extent,but such differences are reflected in different aspects.Hawkes' version shows more evident differences between Liu's and Wang's speech styles in terms of the use of vernaculars,imperative sentences,necessity modals,and the level of formality of their speeches,while the Yangs' version focuses more on the differences in regard to sentence length,readability,the use of negative questions and imperative sentences.Taken together,Hawkes' version tends to pay more attention to details when portraying figure's style and focuses more on reproducing figure's general speech style rather than pursuing sentence-for-sentence style equivalence.Besides,it tends to use long and complex sentences in both Liu's and Wang's speeches and pays little attention to the role of sentence length in differentiating the speech styles of these two figures.In contrast,the Yangs' version focuses more on superficial differences,such as the length of sentence,and performs well in distinguishing the tones of Liu's and Wang's speeches.Furthermore,it is more literal in reproducing speech styles of Liu and Wang.As suggested by paratexts,the intention of translation,translation principles of the translators,the flexibility of choosing translation strategies,the influence of literary traditions and the process of translation may as well contribute to the different features of Hawkes'and the Yangs'versions in distinguishing speech styles of Liu Laolao and Wang Xifeng.This study attempts to transform the focus of researches related to the representation of fictional speech styles from a certain character's speech style to speech style differences between different characters,and establish an extensible and systematic research framework for studying the representation of fictional speech style differences.It also combines quantitative and qualitative analysis to provide macroscopic and microscopic support to the research conclusions.With the limit of technique,time and length,this research bears some weaknesses.Liu's and Wang's direct speeches in the Chinese version are not involved in quantitative comparison.Artificial annotation of most linguistic phenomena takes a lot of time and may bring potential errors.This thesis only covers a small range of parameters and the framework awaits further enrichment.It is hoped that this research can bring the representation of fictional speech style differences in translation into broader attention in the area of translation studies and the results of this study may contribute to translation practice.