A Corpus-Aided Study of Shifts in English-to-Chinese Translation of Prepositions

Abstract

This research investigates three types of shifts in English-to-Chinese translation of prepositions, including P-P (parallel shift), P-P- (omissive shift), and P-X (transformative shift), across literary, expressive, operative text types using a corpus-analysis approach. The finding shows that there is an overall higher frequency of P-P- than P-P and P-X. The translation phenomenon is partially attributed to the differences in the number and function of prepositions between English and Chinese. In addition, different textual functions govern the translation shifts, and variation among four translated novels is diagnosed as relevant to the translator’s stylistic preference. In sum, this research supports the dynamic nature of the translation of prepositions under the impacts of contrastive linguistic differences between source and target languages, textual functions and the translator’s style.