On Translators' Styles of Five Versions of The Analects: A Statistic Analysis Based on Corpus Studies

This study compares the languages features and translation strategies in five versions of The Analects through the discussion of the characteristic words and sentence features based on the parallel corpus studies of The Analects. Both the quantitative and qualitative methods are used. Through multilevel analysis, the research results are as the following:the explicitation features are obvious in five versions, and the reasons mainly lie on the translation purpose and social context;the translation styles are diverse, for instance, Slingerland often uses various long sentences and paragraphs, Ku Hungming idiomatic narration techniques; Legge, Lau, and Ames and Rosemont cherishe more on original text which usually increases the reading difficulty of the target versions.