Abstract:

The corpus-based studies have shown that translated Chinese texts use more function words, such as conjunctions, prepositions and pronouns. By now, research concerning the overuse of prepositions has been done mainly focusing on a few specific prepositions, such as “bei” and “ba”, and as the corpus of specific genre has been used in each study, sometimes contradictory findings are produced. Therefore, a survey on the general features of prepositions in translated Chinese is conducted in this paper, based on a comparison between LCMC (The Lancaster Corpus of Mandarin Chinese) and ZCTC (The ZJU Corpus of Translational Chinese), two comprehensive corpora covering different genres. It is found that the overuse of prepositions is significant in all the four genres (press, general prose, learned, fiction) in translated Chinese. Further explorations show that prepositions of time and place and those of content and object are much more frequently used, while prepositions of means and tools are less frequently used; and disyllables tend to be preferred in translated Chinese. These features of prepositions in translated Chinese may result from various factors combined. First, it is interference of English source language. Prepositions are much more frequently used in English than in Chinese and an observation of the English-Chinese parallel corpus indicates that many prepositions in translated Chinese are directly translated from prepositions and sometimes conjunctions or other phrases in the original English. The second factor is the characteristics of Chinese prepositions. In Chinese, prepositions often used at the beginning of a sentence or in the framework ending with a locative or other noun, such as prepositions of time and space and those of content and object, are more likely to be omitted. They are also more likely to be overused in translated Chinese. The third is the development of Chinese language itself. The modern Chinese sentence tends to be longer and more complex, and more prepositions is needed to help make clear the relationship between different parts of a sentence.

Keywords: translated Chinese; prepositions; corpus; features

摘要：

基于语料库的研究表明,介词作为一种功能词在翻译汉语中有明显多用倾向。本文通过比较汉语原创语料库LCMC和汉语翻译语料库ZCTC,分析概括了汉语翻译文本中介词的使用特征并探究其成因。研究发现,翻译汉语介词总体使用频率在所有文类中均显著高于汉语原创文本;翻译汉语介词多用主要体现在时空介词和对象内容介词上,工具方式类介词则具有少用倾向;此外,翻译汉语倾向于多用双音节介词。本文认为,翻译汉语介词的使用特征是源语影响、汉语介词用法特点及汉语发展演变等因素综合作用的结果。

关键词: 翻译汉语, 介词, 语料库, 使用特征