Ji Meng. Phraseology in Corpus-Based Translation Studies

Bern: Peter Lang, 2010. — xx + 232 p. — ISBN: 978-3-0353-0014-7 (New Trends in Translation Studies - 1)Translations of Cervantes’ Don Quijote (1605) take pride of place among foreign literature in China. Despite the contrasts between the two cultures and the passage of four centuries the adventures and misadventures of the Castilian hero have always been popular with Chinese readers.
In this book a corpus-based stylistic study is used to explore two contemporary Mandarin Chinese translations of Don Quijote: those by Yang Jiang (1978) and Liu Jingsheng (1995). Utilising a micro-structural perspective this study suggests explanations for the surprising popularity of Don Quijote in China.Construction of a Parallel Corpus of Don Quijote (Part I)
Corpus construction in Translation Studies
Selection of corpus texts
Segmentation of Chinese texts
Parallel text alignmentCorpus Data Retrieval and Classification
Problem-oriented annotation
Automatic extraction of four-character expressions
Classification of Chinese four-character expressions
Redefining Chinese idioms
Classification of figurative idioms and archaic idiomsGeneral Phraseological Patterns in Yang’s Translation
Quantifying style in corpus-based Translation Studies
Sampling
Time factor in the use of idioms in contemporary Chinese
Yang’s phraseological preference for morpho-syntactically patterned phrasesGeneral Phraseological Patterns in Liu’s Translation
Liu’s phraseological preference for figurative idioms
Cognate metaphors
Non-cognate metaphors
Other figurative speeches in the source text
Liu’s phraseological preference for archaic idiomsUse of Figurative/Archaic Idioms in the Two Translations
Use of figurative idioms in the two Chinese translations
Use of archaic idioms in the two translationsQuantitative Exploration of Stylistic Variation in Liu’s Translation
A context-motivated theory for style shifting in literary translation
Statistical method applied
Variable reduction and pattern recognitionBalancing of manual and automatic textual analysis
Systematicity and replicability of the processing of textual information
Construction of theoretical models to elicit the nature of literary translation
A Complete Situational Framework for Register Studies