School of Foreign Languages, Northeast Normal University, Changchun, China.
PLoS One. 2024 Jul 16;19(7):e0305894. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0305894. eCollection 2024.
Based on the self-built English translation corpus of Mencius, this study conducts a lexical, syntactical and textual comparative analysis of Mencius English translations by James Legge (1861), Leonard A.Lyall (1932) and D.C.Lau (1970) through adopting a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods and employing Tokenizer, Tree Tagger, WordSmith8.0, AntConc and Readability Analyzer software. By analyzing representative translation examples and the para-text of each translation, this study explores the relationship among the historical background, translator's cultural identity and translation motivation. The results reveal that the translator's style is closely related to the translation strategy determined by the translation purpose rooted in translator's cultural identity in different historical and social backgrounds.The study findings will bring a new perspective for the translator's cultural identity research, contribute to the translator's style study and deepen the understanding of the English translation and overseas dissemination of Mencius with the help of corpus technology.
基于自建的《孟子》英译语料库，本研究采用定量与定性相结合的方法，运用 Tokenizer、Tree Tagger、WordSmith8.0、AntConc 和 Readability Analyzer 等软件，对理雅各（James Legge，1861 年）、赖雅明（Leonard A. Lyall，1932 年）和刘殿爵（D.C.Lau，1970 年）的《孟子》英译本进行词汇、句法和篇章层面的对比分析。通过分析有代表性的译文实例和各译本的副文本，本研究探讨了历史背景、译者的文化身份和翻译动机之间的关系。研究结果表明，在不同的历史和社会背景下，译者的风格与根植于其文化身份的翻译目的所决定的翻译策略密切相关。本研究有助于拓展译者文化身份研究的新视角，丰富对译者风格的研究，借助语料库技术加深对《孟子》英译及海外传播的理解。
