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A Corpus-Based Study on the Translators’ Styles in the English Versions of The True Story of Ah-Q
SUN Huan-ni
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DOI:10.17265/2159-5836/2023.09.003
University of Shanghai for Science and Technology, Shanghai, China
The True Story of Ah-Q written by Lu Xun has been translated into forty different languages, making great contributions to the external dissemination of Chinese culture. This paper adopts the corpus stylistics method to analyze the translators’ styles presented by William A. Lyell and Julia Lovell’s translations of Ah-Q. Based on the self-built comparable corpus of the two translations, the paper investigates and analyzes them from the lexical and sentence level. In terms of vocabulary, the translations are statistically analyzed from the standardized type-token ratio, word frequency, word length and vocabulary density; at the sentence level, the article studies the average sentence lengths and sentence complexity. The first major finding is that Lovell’s vocabulary is richer than that of Lyell, and Lovell’s average word length is longer. Also, the average sentence length of both translations exceeds the original text, and Lovell has the highest average sentence length. Secondly, Lovell prefers to use simple sentences while Lyell prefers complex sentences. Nevertheless, both of them strive to make Lu Xun’s works understandable to foreign readers, thus understanding Chinese culture better.
The True Story of Ah-Q, corpus stylistics method, translators’ styles
Journal of Literature and Art Studies, September 2023, Vol. 13, No. 9, 643-649
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