《四书》理雅各和辜鸿铭英译本的翻译风格考察——基于语料库的统计与分析

A Contrastive Analysis of the Translation Style of Two English Versions of The Four Books:Based on the Statistics and Analysis of the Corpora

基于自建语料库,借助语料库研究方法从单词、语句和语篇三个维度对儒家经典《四书》理雅各和辜鸿铭译本的翻译风格标记进行数据统计,对比分析翻译风格特征的异同并探讨导致风格差异的可能原因。通过对比分析,发现两个译文语句通顺自然、衔接自然、整体用词难度和阅读难度趋于一致,显示出翻译文本显化和简化的趋势。标准化TTR、词汇密度和句子平均长度等方面的统计数据差异说明理译词汇使用更丰富多变,句子结构更加简单明了,阅读难度比辜译稍低,整体可读性略胜一筹。显然,两位翻译家截然不同的翻译目的是造成译文风格差异的重要因素。

Based on self-built corpora,this study uses Word Smith to make a quantitative and qualitative analysis of two English versions of The Four Books by James Legge and Gu Hongming at the levels of words,sentences and discourses,so as to find out the similarities and differences of their translation styles and the possible reasons leading to style differences.The result shows that both translation versions are fluent and idiomatic in expression,of the same reading difficulty,coherent in discourse and showing the signs of explication and simplification.The statistical differences shown in STTR,lexical density and sentence average length show that Legge’s version is more flexible in word choice,of simpler sentence structures,lower reading difficulty and higher readability.Obviously,the different purposes of translation account for the differences in their translation styles.