An Investigation of the Occurrence Frequency of the Chinese Particle 的 in Translation and Non-translation Texts: A Case Study of Syntactic Borrowing in English-Chinese Translation

Abstract

The Chinese particle 的「de」 may be combined with other words, phrases, clauses or sentences to become possessives, adjectives, genitives, adverbs, relative clauses, or emphatic sentences. For this reason, it is found to occur in Chinese writing frequently. This study, by calculating the occurrence frequencies of 的 in 30 English-Chinese translation and 30 non-translation texts, aims to investigate whether there is significant difference between the two types of writing in their applications of 的 on the one hand, and whether English restrictive relative clauses are the source of difference on the other hand. The ANOVA shows translation texts, which contain an average of 42.3 的s, are significantly different from non-translation texts, which contain an average of 34.7 的s (F(1, 58)=31.56＞4.00, P＜.05). Concerning the VP+的 +_/ and S+的 +_/ constructions in both types of texts, the 30 non-translation texts contain on the average 7.16 的s per 1000 words in a row, while the 30 translation texts contain averagely 8.6 的s, outnumbering non-translation texts by 1.44 的s. The study finds that there is no significant difference existing between the two kinds of texts (F(1, 58)=2.02＜4.00, P＜.05). English restrictive relative clauses and their derived participle phrases are therefore not the sources of difference in translation texts. The difference may be attributed to influences from translations of other English syntactic features.