A Corpus-based Study Of The Translator’s Style Of Three English Versions Of Luotuo Xiangzi

Lao She is a well-known novelist and play wright of Chinese modern literature.A lot of his works have been translated into multiple languages,which have made a great contribution to the international promotion of Chinese culture.Luotuo Xiangzi is one of Lao She’s masterpieces,and it is also Lao She’s first work translated into English.However,researchers pay inadequate attention to the translations of Luotuo Xiangzi and its translator’s style.This thesis intends to find out the similarities and differences among the translators through the study of translator’s style,in order to provide some insights for other translators and help Chinese culture to be global.Applying the multi-complex model of comparison,proposed by Huang Libo and Chi Chiyu,as the research framework,this thesis studies the translator’s style of Howard Goldblatt,Jean James and Lynette Shi,who are the translators of Luotuo Xiangzi,from two aspects:"target-type translator’s style(T-type translator’s style)" and"source-type translator’s style(S-type translator’s style)".In T-type translator’s style,this thesis conducts the research from three levels,namely,lexical,syntactic and textual levels by building a comparable corpus of Luotuo Xiangzi and employing BNC Baby Fiction as the reference corpus.In S-type translator’s style,this thesis investigates the translator’s style by building a parallel corpus based on Wang Jianguo and He Ziran’s pragmatic finding that "Chinese is process-oriented and English is result-oriented".This thesis finds that the three translators present different styles in their translations.In target-text type,Howard Goldblatt and Lynette Shi present similar styles.They employ more diverse vocabulary and more complex and longer sentences in their translations.Their text difficulty is higher,while the overall readability is close to"easy".On the contrary,Jean James uses less diverse and simpler vocabulary and shorter sentences in her translation.Therefore,her text difficulty is lower and the overall readability is close to "very easy".In source-text type,Goldblatt’s and Lynette’s translations are both result-oriented,between which the former is proportionally higher;however,James follows Chinese pragmatic preference in her translation,which accounts for her use of larger number of words and rigid expressions.Besides,this thesis finds that translators have highlighted the pragmatic preference,result-orientation by means of "omission or implication",choosing "concrete or abstract words","conversing new information into given information","restatement","condensing events into concepts",using "passive voice" and "transposing the cause-result structure into result-cause structure".Moreover,this thesis chooses to compare Goldblatt’s style in Rickshaw Boy with that in Red Sorghum.It is found that Goldblatt presents a similar style in the two translations both in target-text type and source-text type.More importantly,this thesis echoes Huang Libo’s view that Lynette is a bilingual person of Chinese and English.Since translators’ native languages influence their pragmatic orientation in their translations,this thesis explores which pragmatic orientation is reflected more significantly in her translation through the analysis of her style in source-text type.The result shows that her style in source-text type is similar to Goldblatt’s because she almost employs as many result-oriented expressions in her translations as Goldblatt.And her translation is regarded pragmatically as English.Since it is believed that the multi-complex model of comparison is a rough research framework and lacks specific research methods especially in S-type translator’s style,this thesis provides a pragmatic perspective to reveal the translators’ style.Compared with the current research perspectives such as of speech presentation and the translation of culture-loaded words which mainly reflect local styles,the pragmatic method helps disclose the translator’s style from a macro level,which contributes to a further research of corpus-based translator’s style.