基于平行语料库的《孔雀东南飞》两个英译本译者风格研究_英语论文

A Parallel Corpus-based Study on Translators’ Styles in Two English Versions of Southeast the Lovelorn Peacocks Fly

摘要

《孔雀东南飞》是我国文学史上第一首长篇叙事诗，也是乐府诗发展史上的巅峰之作，从19世纪末开始就备受西方译界的青睐。本研究从亚瑟·韦利和许渊冲两个英译本出发，建立平行语料库，通过词汇、句子和语篇三个不同层面，从文化负载词、平均句长、显性连接等角度，利用大量客观且有说服力的语料库数据，分析两个译本中蕴含的规律性语言应用模式。研究发现许渊冲译文形符数和功能词少，译文较多地运用了生僻词；亚瑟·韦利译文形符数和功能词多，特别是形容词和动词的使用比例远高于许渊冲译文。在翻译方法上，许渊冲译文偏向于意译，而亚瑟·韦利更倾向于直译。许渊冲非常重视押韵和译文的音美，所以在一定程度上会影响到原诗意象的传达，而亚瑟·韦利喜欢保留原诗意象。这些都与两位译者的翻译理念和母语文化有着紧密联系，韦利译本偏向于异化，而许渊冲译本则偏向于归化。总之，两位译者的翻译风格各具特色，亮点纷呈。

关键词：《孔雀东南飞》；译者风格；平行语料库；英译本

Abstract

Southeast the Lovelorn Peacocks Fly, being the first narrative poem in Chinese literary history, was the culmination in the development of Yuefu poetry. Since the late 19th century, it has been welcomed popularly by western translators. This thesis establishes one parallel corpora from Xu Yuanchong’s and Arthur Waley’s translations of Southeast the Lovelorn Peacocks Fly, and conducts a study from three levels of vocabulary, sentences and discourse, such as culture-loaded words, average sentence length, explicit conjunction and so on. It also takes advantages of objective and persuasive corpus data to analyze the regular language application mode contained in the two translations. The study finds that there are fewer tokens and functional words but more literary words in Xu Yuanchong’s translation. On the contrary, there are a great many tokens and functional words in Arthur Waley’s translation, especially the proportion of adjectives and verbs are much higher than Xu’s version. As for translation methods, Waley’s version is partial to literal translation while Xu’s version is inclined to free translation. In detail, Xu Yuanchong pays attention to rhyme and beauty in sound, so his translation may influence the conveying of original images to a certain degree. By contrast, Waley is keen on reserving the images of original poetry. These phenomenons are linked closely with the conception of translation and native language of these two translators. Waley is partial to foreignization while Xu clearly likes domestication. In brief, the translation styles of two translators are with distinctive characteristics and sparkling highlights. 

Keywords:  Southeast the Lovelorn Peacocks Fly; translator’s style; parallel corpus; English translation 

Contents

I. Introduction 1

1.1 Background Information of Southeast the Lovelorn Peacocks Fly 1

1.2 Literature Review 2

II. Research Methodology 5

2.1 Translator’s Style 5

2.1.1 Introduction of Translator’s Style 5

2.1.2 Analytic Technique 6

2.2 Corpus-based Translation Studies 8

2.2.1 Parallel Corpus 8

2.2.2 Description of Corpus-based Translation Studies 8

Ⅲ. Data Collection and Analysis 10

3.1 Study Design 10

3.1.1 Corpus Collection 10

3.1.2 Corpus Alignment and Annotation 10

3.2 Analysis on the Vocabulary Dimension 13

3.2.1 Type-token Ratio 13

3.2.2 Sight Words 14

3.2.3 Usage of Functional Words 17

3.2.4 Lexical Density 21

3.2.5 Culture-loaded Words 22

3.3 Analysis on the Syntactic Dimension 25

3.3.1 Sentence Alignment 25

3.3.2 Average Sentence Length 26

3.3.3 Passive Sentence Pattern 27

3.4 Analysis on the Discourse Dimension 28

3.4.1 Personal Pronoun 28

3.4.2 Explicit Conjunction 30

IV. Conclusion 33

Bibliography 35