Title: A Corpus-Based Diachronic Study of the Translator’s Style in Four Chinese Versions of The Moon and Sixpence
Abstract: Based on the self-built English-Chinese parallel corpus of four Chinese versions of The Moon and Sixpence, this study applies the corpus-based approach, from the diachronic perspective, to probe into the lexical and sentence-level differences and changes in the four Chinese versions of The Moon and Sixpence, including its first Chinese version in the 1980s and three later versions in the 2010s. It is expected that a new research horizon is supplied for the studies of foreign literature’s translation introductions. The results show that, in the two different times, the three retranslated versions do have diachronic differences and changes compared with the first translated one, such as the rises of lexical variation, lexical richness, and lexical difficulty, the decreases of paragraph length, sentence length and sentence segment length, as well as the weakening foreignization and strengthening domestication of translation strategies. Besides, translator identity has an intervening effect on the diachronic differences and changes of the four versions to some extent, as exemplified by Yao’s inheritance from Fu. Therefore, the study holds that the socio-historical factor serves as the paramount reason behind the diachronic differences and changes. Another two factors, translator identity and language evolution, should also be taken into consideration.
Keywords: The Moon and Sixpence, corpus data, translator’s style, diachronic analysis, William Somerset Maugham
Authors: Bihao Li, School of Interpreting and Translation Studies, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, Guangzhou, Guangdong, China; Yinji Huang, School of Interpreting and Translation Studies, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, Guangzhou, Guangdong, China; Hai Wang, Professor, School of Interpreting and Translation Studies, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, Guangzhou, Guangdong, China.
DOI: 10.19967/j.cnki.flc.2022.04.012