A Corpus-based Study Of Translator’s Style In The Three English Versions Of Xi You Ji

Translator plays an essential role in the whole process of translation.However,in the traditional view of translation,the translator’s role is often neglected.Due to the rise of descriptive translation studies and the "cultural turn" in translation studies,more and more attention has been paid to the status of translators.Based on the muti-complex model of comparison on translator’s style proposed by Huang Libo&Zhu Zhiyu(2012),namely,S-style translator’s style(source text oriented)and T-style one(target text oriented),this thesis is to analyze the translator’s style of Anthony C.Yu,Arthur Waley and Julia Lovell in translating Xi You Ji.With regard to the T-type translator’s style,three self-built comparable corpora based on Xi You Ji and its three English versions will be employed,with Translational English Corpus and British National Corpus used as reference corpora in terms of the research on lexical and syntactic features and narrative structures in the three versions.For the S-type translator’s style,the research is mainly based on the parallel corpus to study their translation techniques of indigenous information in the source text.With the help of corpus data collection software,the data has been integrated and statistically analyzed,and the similarities and differences of the three translators’translator’s styles are obtained.In Yu’s version,the lexical richness is relatively high,short words being more frequently used and sentences with more complex sentence pattern.Influenced by the word order of the original reporting clause,Yu tends to add"that" after the reporting verb.Syntactic and narrative structures in his version,moreover,are close to those of translated English.In Waley’s version,the words are moderate in length and simple in diction.He inclines to short sentences with moderate difficulty,and tends to omit "that" after the reporting verb with the third person narrative perspective being more frequently used.Lexical,syntactical features and narrative structure,in brief,are close to those of original English.In Lovell’s version,long words are more frequently used,but with simpler sentence patterns and shorter sentences.She has a tendency to translate reporting verbs into their hyponyms.Like Waley,her version is close to the linguistic features of original English as well.In addition,this thesis makes a comparative study of the three translators’ S-type translator’s styles by examining their translation of indigenous information in the source text.In the translation of common indigenous information,the three translators usually use free translation,literal translation substitution and omission.Yu often adopts literal translation,and the two native English translators,Waley and Lovell,give priority to free translation.When encountering the indigenous information with excessively complex cultural background,Yu tends to use literal translation with adding footnotes,while Lovell and Waley choose to omit it if not hindering reader’s understanding.In general,Yu’s translator’s style centers on the source text.His linguistic features are close to translated English,with more professional terms and higher degree of written language so as to retain the unique features of the source language.Waley’s and Lovell’s translator’s styles,on the other hand,center on the target text with linguistic features being close to original English.For the reception of target readers,their versions abridge a great deal in the course of translation to make readers grasp the essence of Xi You Ji.The indigenous information with exceedingly complex cultural information is omitted in Waley’s and Lovell’s versions.The differences in the three translators’ translator’s styles are related to their target readers,their translation principles and the social and cultural context of the target language.