A Corpus-based Study on Translator Styles from the Case of English Translation of Cong Cong

Based on a self-built small corpus, this research adopts quantitative analysis method and analyzes the translators’ styles of the two translations from the lexical and syntactic levels, as well as the effects of the translators’ styles on readability with Cong Cong by Zhu Ziqing as source text, English translations of Cong Cong by Zhang Peiji and Zhu Chunshen as research objects. Results show that: on the lexical level, Zhang’s version has a higher pictographic/analog ratio and lexical density, and the translator adopts an explicit processing strategy in conveying the original text information, while Zhu’s version is relatively shorter, and the information transmission is more obscure. On the syntactic level, sentences in the translation by Zhang are shorter and the sentence patterns are more complex, while those in the translation by Zhu are longerand the syntactic structures are simpler. Translator style has a significant impact on readability. Data analysis reveals that Zhang’s version is more difficult and less readable, while Zhu’s version is on the opposite.