Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Acclaimed as one of the Four Great Classical Novels of the Chinese literature, Hongloumeng by Cao Xueqin has long been a subject of academic importance in the area of Chinese literary studies. Over the years, translation researchers have come up with insightful observations in their comparative study of the two full-length translations of the novel, one by Hawkes and Minford (the Story of the Stone, Penguin, 1973-1986) and the other by Xianyi Yang and Gladys Yang (A Dream of Red Mansions, Foreign Languages Press, 1978-1980). The proposed study systematically investigates the formulaic language of both translations as a feature of translator style using corpus-based methods. In this study, the 3-word and 4-word lexical bundles were extracted and systematically analysed to shed light on how they differ in translator style. The findings show that Hawkes’ translation tends to use a greater number and variety of lexical bundles than Yangs’ version, which is to a large extent determined by the different translation strategies used by the respective translators. In view of the research findings, it is proposed that formulaic language can serve as a robust indicator for studying translation/translator style.