A Corpus-Assisted Study of Translation Styles in Eight English Translations of the Mencius (1895–2016)
Abstract
This study offers a panoramic view of the translation styles of the eight English translations of the Mencius across three centuries. A corpus-assisted approach, supported by WordSmith Tools and Readability Studio was employed to generate quantitative indicators of lexical diversity, sentence length and readability scores. A comparable corpus of the eight translations (Legge, 1895; Lyall, 1932; Lau, 1970; Hinton 1998; Zhao et al., 1999; Van Norden 2008; Bloom, 2009; Eno 2016) was constructed for comparative analysis. The findings reveal substantial stylistic variation across the translations in terms of lexical diversity, syntactic complexity, and readability, reflecting distinct translational preferences and linguistic styles. The results suggest that translators negotiate translation style differently when rendering the Mencius to fulfil different translation purposes across diverse historical and cultural contexts. Linguistic norms, translation purposes, translators’ backgrounds, and individual linguistic preferences appear to influence the translation style. The study contributes to corpus-based translation studies by providing empirical evidence of diachronic stylistic changes in the English translations of the Mencius. It also offers practical implications for intercultural communication and translation pedagogy by demonstrating how translation style may affect accessibility and reception among contemporary English-language readers.
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