Abstract
The use of lexical bundles (LBs) has been affirmed to be a reliable indicator of translators’ style, as they can reveal the idiosyncrasies beyond the use of words (Mastropierro 2018). Using LBs as an indicator, the current study investigates how fictional dialogues in two full-length English translations of Hongloumeng diverge in style. This corpus-assisted study is based on the first 80 chapters of two full-length Hongloumeng translations, that is, one translated by the British sinologist David Hawkes (who translated the first 80 chapters) and John Minford (who translated the remaining 40 chapters), and the other co-translated by the Chinese translator Xianyi Yang and his British wife, Gladys Yang. The results of our study show that Hawkes used more tokens and types of LBs than did the Yang couple. Further structural and functional analysis revealed that Hawkes overused verb phrases and stance markers, whereas the Yangs overused prepositional phrases and referential markers. The divergences in style are discussed with reference to the translators’ language backgrounds, life experiences, and translation purposes.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | Advances in Corpus Applications in Literary and Translation Studies |
| Editors | Riccardo Moratto, Defeng Li |
| Publisher | Taylor and Francis Ltd. |
| Chapter | 13 |
| Pages | 229-253 |
| Number of pages | 25 |
| ISBN (Electronic) | 9781003298328 |
| ISBN (Print) | 9781032287386 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 26 Dec 2022 |
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- General Arts and Humanities
- General Social Sciences