Proceedings of the 2012 International Conference on Machine Learning and Cybernetics, Xian, 15-17 July, 2012

MINING TEXTUAL-FEATURE BASED RESEARCH ON TRANSLATOR'S STYLES

JING-HUI RENt, LI-XIN W ANG2

lEnglish Department, Postgraduate Candidate of Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150001, China 2MTI Teaching Center, Professor of School of Foreign Languages, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150001, China

E-MAIL: RenlinghuiI987@gmail.com.lixin_wang@hotmail.com

Abstract: The utilization of Artificial Intelligence techniques in

mining translation studies brings new discoveries on the research of translator's styles. Aided by the software WordSmith Tools and the Antconcordance, this paper conducts an empirical study of translator's styles by analyzing three English versions of the most famous Chinese love poem-Chang hen ge written by Bai Juyi in Tang Dynasty from three textual levels. The major experiment findings

exhibit that the translator from the source language culture is prone to be paraphrase and translators from the target

language culture tend to be metaphrase.

Keywords: Translator's style; Chang hen ge; WordSmith; Corpus

1. Introduction

Traditional translation studies are generally based on personal and subjective feelings, which are somewhat biased if researchers rely solely on their intuitions and impressions. With the introduction of Computational Linguistics to translation, the quantitative approach and the objective way of doing researches gradually become the mainstream in translation studies. According to the definition of Kennedy, "corpus is a body of written text or transcribed speech which can serve as a basis for linguistic analysis and description" [1]. Corpus analysis programs, especially concordances, have been employed as useful searching aids in translation studies, which make it possible to elicit data based on large-scale language materials and authentic figures. Chang hen ge, acknowledged as the greatest classical narrative poem, was composed in the 8th

century in Tang Dynasty when poems were featured with strict rhymes. However, Bai Juyi freed his poem from the previous rules and incorporated an ancient music style "Ge" considered as being more free and various into his composition. Apart from that, Bai also added the straight forward style of writing into Chang hen ge, which stated the tragic affair between Yang Guifei and the Emperor

978-1-4673-1487-9/12/$31.00 ©2012 IEEE

Ming of Tang directly without much exaggeration and wordplays. Overall speaking, Chang hen ge is a combination of 7 -character poem written in rhymes and a narrative song with free styles towards the intonation and rhythm, which makes this poem specified and worth detailed study on its textual features.

In this paper, the research methodology of Corpus Linguistics is adopted to make an analysis of three English versions of Chang hen ge based on the study of textual features. The purpose is to analyze specific language styles

reflected in their translations in three textual levels and consequently get to know different translator's styles.

The whole paper constitutes five parts. The first part is an introduction to the paper and the second part is a brief literature review on the corpus-based study of translator's styles at home and abroad. The third part introduces the research methodology this paper employs. The fourth part is the discussion based on the data analysis from textual angles, specifically, lexicons, sentences as well as syntax and the conclusion section summarizes the major findings of this research.

2. Literature review

In the western world, the pioneer study on translator's style is generally acknowledged as A.F.Tytler's "three laws" that governs the translation. Tytler in his essay Essay on the Principle of Translation, states that "the style and manner of writing should be of the same character with that of the original" [2]. Wilss claims "it leads from a source language text to a target language text"[3]. However, since the mid-1990s, some scholars have begun to notice the "presence" of a translator in the target text. As Bassnett propounds "Every translation, up to a certain point, is an invention and as such it contributes a unique text. "[4] Baker expresses similar views, who conducts a corpus-based study and finds out differences between two translations.[5] This serves as a proof that translators do have different

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Proceedings of the 2012 International Conference on Machine Learning and Cybernetics, Xian, 15-17 July, 2012

characteristics of languages, and leave their individual imprints on translations. All these findings illustrate that the research focus has been shifted gradually to the translator-based stylistic investigations and translator's "individual imprint" worth detailed and intensive study.

In China, studies on translator's styles are for the most part characterized by comments and remarks based on subjective feelings. The most influential one is Yan Fu's three criteria "fidelity, fluency, and elegance", which prescribes what a successful translation is like. Since 1960s, however, the extensive introduction of westem linguistic theories has made it possible for more systematic and less subjective analysis of translator's style. Zheng Hailing holds the point that the task of a translator is to transfer different styles of different authors. [6]

The domestic translation studies based on corpus mainly focus on theoretical study and articles with empirical studies are not that many. According to Liu Kanglong and Mu Lei's report in Corpus Linguistics and Translation Study, empirical studies of translations only

take up 21 % in 14 journals.[7] Besides, according to the

research, the domestic study on English versions of Chang hen ge is tremendous, but quantitative methods have not been used in analyzing this famous Chinese poem. This paper employs Corpus Linguistics methods and investigates the textual features of Chang hen ge based on statistics, with the target to illustrate language styles of different translators.

3. Research Methodology

As is generally agreed, the design of a corpus should be based on a given research goal in mind. Therefore the corpora of this paper are constructed from the electronic versions of Chang hen ge. Due to the fact that Chang hen ge has many English versions, the one with most information which can represent different cultural backgrounds is intended to be selected. Therefore after careful research and selection, the comparable corpus involves three translated versions by three renowned

translators-Xu Yuanchong from China; W.J.B Feltcher

from the Great Britain; Yang Xianyi&Gladys Yangs as the collaborative translator from China and Britain. In this research, the three corpora are respectively marked as Xu, Yang and Feltcher. In the west, perhaps the most influential contemporary corpus is British National Corpus (BNC), which is a monolingual corpus in that it only deals with modem British English. The BNC corpus is taken as an inference when comparisons are made among different versions.

The corpus analysis tools taken are the software WordSmith Tools and the Antconcordance to elicit data from the electronic versions. Concord, Keywords and Wordlist, as main functions of WordSmith are mainly utilized. With Concord, any word or phrase in the context could be fixed as well as its collations. Keywords is used to find the key words in the translated texts and Wordlist provides basic information of lexical features. The Antconcordance is conducted to analyze the concordance plot and cluster features.

4. Data analysis and discussion

The empirical study makes conclusions based on data, which is objective instead of subjective. With the favour of software, this section deals with distinctions among different translators concerning English versions of Chang hen ge.

4.l. Lexical level

In this paper, lexicons are considered as the basic unit for research. In Corpus Linguistics, the research of lexicons could reflect the features of each version in terms of the lexical variation, the lexical density and the high frequent words.

4.l.l. Lexical variations

The lexical variation of a text is mainly reflected by the Type/Token Ratio. Type refers to word forms and token reflects individual words. The ratio and lexical variations keep a positive relation. The higher the ratio is, the higher the lexical variation of the text is. Besides, the ratio also reflects how much the translator has been affected by the source language text. Generally, the lower the ratio is, the more closer the translator is to the language habits of English speakers. However, with time going by, the token might get increased while the type is not affected. As a result, the Type/Token ratio might get lower. WordSmith Tools offers Standardized Type/Token Ratio (STTR), which regards 1000 tokens as the basic calculating unit and makes it possible to compare different corpus at the same level.

STTR =

Types in 1000 Tokens x 100%

Token/lOOO (1)

The comparison of Standardized Type/Token Ratios among three English versions is presented in Figure 1, with the BNC corpus taken as the reference.

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Proceedings of the 2012 International Conference on Machine Learning and Cybernetics, Xian, 15-17 July, 2012

49. 9 5 1 49

47. 4 49. 1

47 45 43 41. 2 41 39 37 35

Xu Yang Feltcher BNe

Figure 1. Comparisons of STTR

Figure 1 explicitly shows that ratios of three versions all take higher positions than that of BNC. It reflects: (1) The lexical variations of three translated texts are all higher that of BNC. BNC is a corpora collected with daily speeches, however, translations of Chang hen ge explore a much more different language patterns. (2)Among three versions, Xu Yuanchong, a Chinese local translator, has a much wider range of word choices, which shall better translate the image of the poem and represent a vivid picture of the love story between the heroine and the hero.

(3)It's unexpected that the lexical variation of Chinese local translator can be so close to that of English native speakers, which reflects that Xu has a better understanding of Chinese ancient cultures and he adds much information when translating to help the reader perceive the poem better. (4) Although the lexical variations of Yang's and Feltcher's versions get relatively narrowed down, their languages especially Feltcher's word ranges stay alongside with the language habits of native speakers.

4.1.2. Lexical density

Lexical density (LD) refers to the proportion of notional words in each corpus.

LD =

Notional Words x l 00%

Total Volume of Words (2)

The notional words in English usually refer to those which have stable meaning and normally include nouns, verbs, adjectives and most adverbs. In a text, the proportion of notional words keeps a positive relation with the difficult index of the texts. With the aid of Wordlist function of WordSmith Tools, the research is able to get the statistics of notional words in three translated versions. Figure 2 demonstrates the comparison of lexical densities concerning nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs in three verSIOns.

59 58. 5

58 57. 5

57 56. 5

56 55. 5

55

58 7

1--'------I-- 57. 7

I-- .------

I--I--I--I--

Xu Yang

Figure 2. Comparisons of LD

55. 8

-rr-Feltcher

Yang's version comes closer to Xu's and those two texts are much higher than that of Feltcher. The variations in lexical density conclude: (1) All three translated versions are texts with high lexical densities. (2)Xu Yuanchong and Yang Xianyi deliver much more information about the descriptions of characters, the environment and the story in their translations, which, on the contrary, increases the difficult index of texts. (3)Although the lexical density of Feltcher's version is relatively lower, it represents how the translator decreases the difficult index of the texts via downsizing the notional scale, which is much easier to be understood and likely to be accepted by readers. For western readers, Feltcher's version might be preferable, as he takes readers' acceptance into considerations.

4.1.3. High frequent lexicons

The Wordlist function in WordSmith Tools can calculate the frequency of highly used words and offer an overall comparison of three translated versions. The BNC corpus is employed as a reference. After calculating, four corpus have four frequent words in common, which are "the, and, of, to". Besides, three translated versions totally share 6 frequent words: the, and, of, to, her, in. The proportions of top 10 frequent words in three translated texts are respectively 23.91%, 23.65% and 26.38%, which are all higher than the 13.14% of BNC. It concludes that: (I)Three translated texts have much common with BNC in terms of function words, which indicates that the translations fit the feature that function words are frequently used in English. (2)"her" is the highest frequent pronoun among three translated versions, which indicates the clue of the plot in Chang hen ge. It tells the reader that the main heroine in the story is a female. The reason why the objective case "her" instead of subjective case "she" is frequently used is the girl might be under threaten and is landed in a passive position. She couldn't control her fate and continue her love with her partner and finally has to face the end of her life.

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Proceedings of the 2012 International Conference on Machine Learning and Cybernetics, Xian, 15-17 July, 2012

4.2. Sentence level

Generally, sentences in English usually start with a capital character and ends with a full stop, an exclamation mark or a question mark. The average sentence length is calculated by the unit of words. Bulter divides sentences into three kinds: short (1-9words); medium (1O-25words); long (>25words). [8]

4.2.1. Average sentence length

The average sentence length(ASL) could reflect not only the length of each text but also provide a general view about which translator adds more extra information to each line and whose style resembles most with the source text.

Total Words ASL = x 100% (3)

Total Sentences

The comparisons of average sentence length in three translated texts are illustrated in Figure 3.

26 24 22 20 18 16 14 12 10

20. 79

f--'----f--f--f--f--

Xu

15. 27 13. 73 .----

r 1 I--

I I I--

Yang Feltcher

Figure 3. Comparisons of ASL

The above Figure 3 indicates that the three texts explore large distinctions concerning the length of sentences, but they all belong to the medium one. Among them, Xu's version takes the closest distance to 25-word which is the lower boundary of long sentences. We can infer that Xu's translation style tends to be paraphrase via adding more information and increasing word ranges as well as changing sentence patterns. Besides, Yang's and Feltcher's translations display a tendency of metaphrase, which targets to keep a cohesive style with the poem and taking words not that complicated to translate the image of the poem directly.

4.2.2. Clusters and Concordance plot

The cluster function in Antconcordance assists the

analysis of the plot. The top two clusters in three English versions are "like her face" and "from her sleep". Besides "like" is also the most frequent word in three versions. The cluster can continue suggest where the "like" appears in the text, which demonstrates that "like" is mainly connected with "her". We have known that the poem is a love story, so descriptions of the heroine's appearance are essential for composing a poem. Bai Juyi, author of Chang hen ge, resorts to vivid metaphors to display the attractive profile of the heroine. Because the metaphors are translated into English, the proportion of "like" is frequently used. Figure 4 displays the frequency of "like" in each version as well as the proportion of "like" used together with "her". Figure 5 exhibits the overall distribution of "like" in each version.

The view that Xu has a much wider range of word choice could be drawn upon again illustrated in Figure 4 and Figure 5. The data attained in this research explicitly reflects that Xu seems to avoid the frequent use of "like" manifested by Figure 5. However, the other two versions explore much usage of "like" to deal with metaphorical situations and the high frequency of "like", to some extent, makes the text easier to be digested by the reader.

12

10

8

6

4

2

o Xu Yang

o "like" • "her" related

Feltcher

Figure 4. Frequencies of'like" and "like" related with "her"

HIT FILE 1 FILE XYC.txt

HIT FILE: 2 FILE: YXY.txt

I II II I I HIT FILE: 3 FILE: W. J. B. i� Fletcher.txt

I I I I Figure 5. Concordance plots of "like"

4.3. Syntax level

II

The distinction of translations between English and

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Proceedings of the 2012 International Conference on Machine Learning and Cybernetics, Xian, 15-17 July, 2012

Chinese are mainly featured as parataxis and hypotaxis in the field of linguistics. "Parataxis refers to the connection between words, phrases and sentences that are stated via semantic meanings and logical relations between sentences, while hypotaxis refers to the connection between words, phrases and sentences that are demonstrated via conjunctions. "[9] Generally speaking, Chinese is clearly featured with tactic conjunctions, because Chinese prefer to use fewer words to express utmost meaning especially in ancient poems. However, in English, sentences cannot be independent without clear conjunctions as connections. One phenomenon stands out that the English is featured with explicit conjunctions, for example, ";" is often employed as the explicit conjunction in English.

4.3.l. Explicit Conjunctions

"The hypotaxis in English is reflected in the lexical conjunctions, phrasal conjunctions and the conjunctions used in sub-clauses. "[ 10] In the source text of Chang hen ge, though no conjunction indicating relations like contrast, cause or coordination appears, readers could still get the logical relations between lines with the assist of the grammatical order and meanings which are defined as explicit conjunctions. However, when translating them into

English, translators are demanded to add certain explicit conjunctions to state logical relations, for example, and, but, since, if, or, etc. Table displays the statistics of explicit conjunctions in three English versions.

TABLE 1. STATISTICS OF EXPLICIT CONJUNCTIONS

Xu Yang Feltcher Coordinating Conj. 120 34 74 Casual Conj. 35 8 23 Contrast Conj. 19 8 16 Time Conj. 29 9 19 Connective Conj. 3 1 2 Alternative Conj. 7 Total 213 61 135 Volume of words 1164 1195 1344 Freq (%) 18.30 5.10 10.04

The data in TABLE I illustrates that three translators, to some degrees, all increase the explicit conjunctions when translating the poem. Furthermore, it's quite obscure that Xu attaches much importance to the application of conjunctions. What's more, it might infer that Xu Yuanchong, a Chinese local translator, takes cultural and historical backgrounds much into considerations and again

it indicates his translation style-paraphrase.

4.3.2. Tactic Conjunctions

"The so-called tactic conjunctions usually represent the conjunctive relations in an natural order rather than to be aided with any conjunctive word or phrase. "[11] In

English, the explicit relations are often reflected by punctuations, including "."/"?"/ "!"/","/"';". In English versions of Chang hen ge, the first three punctuations often appear at the end of sentences. Although "," has a chance to appear inside the sentence, the sentence is usually connected by conjunctive words or phrases. Only";" is left to become the tactic conjunction. Figure 6 demonstrates frequencies of semicolons in three English versions.

(4)

Total "." Frequecy of " ; "=

' x 100%

Total Subclauses

25

20

15

10

5

o

-

-

-

-

23 29 -

8. 42 -

Xu Yang

Figure 6. Frequency of ";"

16. 19 r---_

-

-

Fe1tcher

Xu's text also takes the highest pOSItIOn in the comparison represented in Figure 6. Yang's version and Feltcher's translation focus much on the delivery of meaning of the poem itself, so their translations are relatively fluent with simple structures. Overall, it again expresses the point that translator's styles of Yang Xianyi and W.1B. Fletcher are likely to be metaphrase.

5. Conclusions

The paper conducts an empirical study of Xu Yuanchong's, Yang Xianyi's and W.1B.Feltcher's styles in three English versions of Chinese poem Chang hen ge based on the analysis of textual features. By constructing corpus and utilizing researching skills of Artificial Intelligence, the paper resorts to a technical method to solve theoretical problems in translation as well as to discover features in literary works. Since 1990s, translation studies with the application of AI techniques have begun to spring up in China, which is quite late compared with the related studies at abroad. Besides, early domestic translation

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Proceedings of the 2012 International Conference on Machine Learning and Cybernetics, Xian, 15-17 July, 2012

studies with AI techniques mainly focus on the conceptual introductions with few empirical studies. In recent years, mining translation studies has been increasingly caught the attention at home and has been acknowledged as a new method to reflect the features of translated works. Based on abundant materials and authentic figures, the conclusions attained in this paper would be far more objective.

The findings are drawn based on the above analysis: the translator from the source language culture has a much wider range of word choice than those of the translators from the target language culture but are less adhered to the language habits of English native speakers. Xu Yuanchong adds more information to the translation via conjunctions, which better presents the poetic image of Chang hen ge and also increases the difficult index of his version, while Yang Xianyi and W.J.B. Feltcher prefer to keep the translation as cohesive as possible via the application of the same word and less utilization of conjunctions. Yang and Feltcher are invisible and loyal to the author. Xu, on the other side, is comparatively visible and loyal to the target readers. On the whole, the translator's style of Xu Yuanchong is prone to be paraphrase or liberal translation, which means that the translator has only kept the content of the original text and added more information and words to rich the understanding of the work. However, Yang Xianyi's and W.J.B. Feltcher's are likely to be metaphrase or literal translation, which means that the translator has not only kept the content of the original text but also made the translation as simplified and less complicated loyal to the original flavor as possible. It is hard to suggest which translated script performs better than the others, because one thousand readers have thousand Hamlets in their minds. The evaluation of those three versions may judged by the cognitive level of audiences. For college teachers and English majored students, Xu Yuanchong's script might be more welcome with its deepened insights on Chinese cultures as well as classic and tasteful lexical selections. Nonetheless, Yang's and Feltcher's are far easier to be accepted by children or western readers.

Some researching results about translator's styles in this paper are in accordance with previous researchers' studies by qualitative methods; however, certain different discoveries are claimed as well. Yang Xianyi's translation's style is conventionally considered as paraphrase, which cannot be abundantly supported by the statistics gained in this research. Apart from that, the result that Xu Yuanchong's style is demonstrated quite differently from that of W.J.B Feltcher argues the views that they two

explore the same poetic translation features. In addition, the paper also exemplifies the convenience and the feasibility of statistics-based researching applications in translation studies. It is hoped that this study will pave the way for future researchers in relevant fields and motivate empirical studies in translation research.

Acknowledgements

The research in this paper is sponsored by National Science Foundation of China (grant No. 61105072).

Great thanks to Prof. Mike Scott from Aston University, the author of WordSmith Tools, giving away the software exclusively for this research.

References

[1] Kennedy, G., An Introduction to Corpus Linguistics. Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press, Beijing, 2000.

[2] Tytler, A. F., "Essays on the principles of translation", Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1978.

[3] W ilss, W., The science of translation-problems and methods, Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press, Shanghai, 200 l.

[4] Bassnett, S., Translation Studies (3rd edition), Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press, Shanghai, 2004.

[5] Baker, M., "Towards a methodology for investigating the style of a literary translator", Target, Vol. 12, No.1, PP241-266, 2000.

[6] Hailing Zheng, Translation Studies for Literature, Wen Xin Press, Zhengzhou, 2000.

[7] Kanglong Liu and Lei Mu, "Corpus Linguistics and Translation Studies", Chinese Translation's Journal, Vo1.27, No.1, PP60-66, Aug.2006.

[8] BUTLER C., Statistics in Linguistics, Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1985.

[9] Zhihong Shao, E-C Translation Studies: A Comprehensive Approach, ECUST Press, Shanghai, 2005.

[10] Y uehong, Huo, "A Corpus-based Comparative Study of Translator's Style", Journal of Dalian University of Technology, Vol.31, No.2, PPI11-115, June, 2010.

[11] HALLIDAY MAK, HASAN R., Cohesion in English, Foreign Language Teaching And Research Press, Beijing, 200l.

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