A Corpus-based Study on Translation Universals: Taking Call to Arms as an Example

Abstract

With the rapid development of corpus linguistics, corpus-based research on translation universals has become a hot spot in the field of translation studies. The studies of translation universals are conducive to better understanding the translation process and provide guidance for translation practice. This study takes Call to Arms as the research corpus and original English novels as the reference corpus. Based on comparable corpora, this research compares Call to Arms with original English novels at both lexical and syntactic levels to analyze the translation universals embodied in Call to Arms. It is found that in terms of lexical richness, lexical density and average word length, Call to Arms reflects the tendency towards simplification. From the perspective of high-frequency words, the explicitation is validated in Call to Arms. With respect to average sentence length, the simplification of Call to Arms is not confirmed. From the aspect of connective structures, Call to Arms shows the tendency towards explicitation and normalization. This study attempts to provide a useful reference for corpus-based studies on translation universals and benefit relevant translation practice.