A Corpus-based Analysis of Attitudinal Changes in Lin Yutang's Self-translation of Between Tears and Laughter

TL;DR

This study analyzes attitudinal shifts in Lin Yutang's self-translation of 'Between Tears and Laughter' using corpus tools, revealing significant changes in anger expression due to different writing purposes and readerships.

Contribution

It is the first to examine attitudinal changes in self-translation through corpus-based analysis, highlighting how translation purpose influences emotional expression.

Findings

Less anger in Lin's self-translation compared to original chapters

No significant attitudinal difference in Xu Chengbin's co-translation

Corpus tools can aid in maintaining attitude consistency in translation

Abstract

Attitude is omnipresent in almost every type of text. There has yet to be any relevant research on attitudinal shifts in self-translation. The Chinese version of Between Tears and Laughter is a rare case of self-translation and co-translation in that the first 11 chapters are self-translated by Lin Yutang, and the last 12 chapters by Xu Chengbin. The current study conducted a word frequency analysis of this book's English and Chinese versions with LIWC and AntConc, and made comparative research into Lin Yutang's attitudinal changes. The results show that due to different writing purposes and readerships, there is less anger in Lin's self-translation (M=0.7755, SD=0.2775) than in the first 11 chapters of the English original (M=1.1036, SD=0.3861), which is a significant difference (t=2.2892, p=0.0331). This attitudinal change is also reflected in the translations of some n-grams containing anger words. In contrast, there is no significant difference (t=1.88, p=0.07) between Xu's co-translation and the corresponding part of the original in attitude "anger". This paper believes that corpus tools can help co-translators keep their translation consistent in attitude.