英語畢業(yè)論文開題報告模板

1、英語畢業(yè)論文開題報告模板A Corpus-based Contrastive Study of the Translators Styles in the Two English Versions of “The New Years Sacrifice”1. Purpose and SignificanceThe conventional translation study is usually based on qualitative and cognitive approaches, which lead to the lack of abundant evidence and data

2、in the course of analysis. In western countries, some significant papers by Mona Baker indicate the inception of the corpus-based translation studies and a large number of insightful researches were made in the last twenty years. However, this quantitative method has not been adopted until the 21st

3、century, and the domestic academic level of corpus and its relative studies are still at its infancy. The purpose of this thesis lies in using the quantitative method facilitated by computer parallel corpora to compare and contrast the stylistic features of two English versions of Lu Xuns novel “The

4、 New Years Sacrifice”, namely, one translated by Yang Xianyi & Gladys Yang and the other by William A. Lyell. This thesis tries to apply the latest approach to contrastive study of translations, which features abundant statistics and data analysis for stylistic and linguistic evidence from the two s

5、elected translations with an aim to provide more objective and scientific findings compared with conventional qualitative translation studies. This will be the first thesis on translation studies from the perspective of Corpus Linguistics by a student from Zhejiang University City College.2. Current

6、 Literature ReviewFirst things first, the basic concepts and methodology come from several classical textbooks in Corpus Linguistics, Translation Studies and Stylistics. Graeme Kennedys An Introduction to Corpus Linguistics, John Sinclairs Corpus, Concordance, Collocation, and Anthony Woodss Statist

7、ics in Language Studies all must be read as an introductory guidance which present a panoramic theoretical overview on Corpus Linguistics. Concerning Stylistics, Geoffrey Leech and Michael Shorts Style in Fiction: A Linguistic Introduction to English Fictional Prose and David Hoovers Some Approaches

8、 to Corpus Stylistics show the theoretical background and practical steps of conventional stylistic case studies. For Translation Studies, Yang Xiaorongs Introduction to Translation Criticism is a well-acknowledged book on the philosophy and methodology in this field. Not surprisingly, great advanta

9、ges could be easily seen if Corpus Linguistics, Translation Studies and Stylistics are combined comprehensively. The adoption of corpus in translation studies began in the early 1990s. “Recognizing the potential for using corpora in translation research in the early 1990s, Mona Baker made a number o

10、f suggestions on which much corpus-based analysis of translation has subsequently been founded” (Olohan 35-56). David Hoover, in his paper Some Approaches to Corpus Stylistics, claims that corpus stylistics can be valuable to literary studies. He says that with the help of corpus linguistics we can

11、explore the degree to which an author has succeeded in creating distinct individual voices within a novel, which will be of great importance in stylistic studies. Besides, the author holds that corpus can also be equally useful to analyze short texts, which provides a theoretical framework for self-

12、built corpus in stylistic studies.And Bakers suggestion was introduced into China by Zhang Meifang (張美芳) in 2002. Then the corpus-based translation studies have witnessed great progress in the following years which provides precious inspiration and suggestion for this thesis.Then, as for the relevan

13、t studies in recent years, two papers and one book are of great reference value. The book is Introducing Corpora in Translation Studies by Maeve Olohan, one of Mona Bakers colleagues, which provides several basic case studies concerning using corpora in translation studies and stylistic contrasts. A

14、nd the two papers are The Use of Parallel Corpus in Translation Criticism - Take Different Versions of Bacons Of Studies for example by Xu Xin (徐欣), and Corpus-based Version Analysis - Take Pride and Prejudice for Example by Xu Wei (徐偉). Sharing almost the same methodology and research steps, both p

15、apers use corpus to measure the source text and the translations by some very basic and superficial statistics, word count, sentence count, average sentence length, wordlist, theme word, Type-token Ratio, etc. Their findings are inspiring but the results are merely presenting data rather than using

16、it as a source of evidence to investigate insightful findings in stylistic and linguistic theory.In 2010 Corpus Linguistics boomed in China, and several important papers contribute a remarkable development in text mark-up, data analysis, theory investigation, etc.Wan Lifangs (萬麗芳) Lexical Diversity

17、Research on L2 English Majors Writing, though not featured in translation studies, shows a quantitative and scientific method to measure the lexical diversity, that is, lexical variation, lexical diversity and error dimension, in English texts. This method could be adopted in this thesis to see the

18、lexical differences between L2 translator Yang Xianyi and L1 translator William A. Lyell. Xiao Zhonghua (肖忠華) and Dai Guangrongs (戴光榮) Finding The Third Code: A Corpus-based Research on Translation Universality measures some typicalEnglish features like conjunction and passive voice. These two featu

19、res are the main differences between Chinese and English, and from the statistics we may see to what extent L2 translators could be influenced by their first language. Xing Fukun (邢富坤) and Cheng Dongyuans (程東元) paper The Readability Research Based on the Language Statistical Model within the framewo

20、rk of readability theory, interprets some commonly seen data, such as word count, sentence count, average sentence length, etc. With the help of this paper, some basic data can be interpreted and studied under a broader contextualization of theory. Last but not the least, some panoramic review on th

21、e development of corpus-based translation studies and stylistics can also be found this year, for example, Zhou Xiaoling (周小玲) and Jiang Jiansongs (蔣堅松) The Development of Corpus-based Translators Stylistic Research Abroad (2000-2009), David Hoovers Some Approaches to Corpus Stylistics, etc.3. Key P

22、oints and Possible DifficultiesFirst, as one of the objects of this thesis is to compile a self-built parallel corpus, all necessary processes of compiling small-scale corpora must be fulfilled which would be time-consuming, such as Optical Character Recognition (OCR), text proofreading, and text ma

23、rk-ups. Great patience, careful treatment and well-knit linguistic knowledge must be involved in this process.Second, some technical difficulties may be met in the following stages of research, such as software compatibility, hardware stability and the unified encoding format. The mainstream corpus

24、software available at this time is mostly developed in the late 1990s and early 2000s for Windows NT 5.0 family or even earlier. As a counter plan, virtual technology has been tested successfully to ensure its good functioning.Third, data analysis is another critical aspect as well. How to testify t

25、he validity of the data? How to determine which statistical method gives the most “near-fact” evidence? Will a Manipulation of Sparse Array be needed if the sample size is too small? All these questions must be answered in the next several months. Data, however, is not the end itself, even if it is

26、quite accurate and fact revealing. As Kennedy addressed in his An Introduction to Corpus Linguistics, “Corpus Linguistics is not an end in itself but is one source of evidence for improving descriptions of the structure and use of languages” (Kennedy 1). This thesis will consider data as the evidenc

27、e source rather than the destination of itself. Finally and necessarily, the data is going to be used to compare and contrast stylistic features of the two translations. All data must be analyzed by conventional qualitative method in each section to indicate the significance of data, that is, what d

28、oes the data mean, or in which way can we interpret the data by conventional qualitative theory? In order to achieve this goal, some case studies in corpus stylistic.4. Approaches and MethodsThis thesis will be conducted on the basis of data collection and analysis of a small-scale self-built parall

29、el corpus, by which quantitative and qualitative methods will be combined comprehensively to reach a final conclusion on stylistic contrasts between the source text (ST) and target texts (TTs). To reach this goal, ST and TTs should be made machine-readable and proofread, and a parallel corpus should

30、 be compiled and marked up.5. A Tentative Outline1. Introduction2. “The New Years Sacrifice” and its Two English Versions3. Approaches and Methods: Self-built Parallel Corpus3.1. Theoretical Background3.2. Study Procedure4. A Corpus-based Stylistic Contrast between the ST and TTs4.1. Readability4.2.

31、 Lexical Diversity4.2.1. Lexical Density by TTR and Standardized TTR4.2.2. Lexical Variation by Uber Index4.2.3. Lexical Sophistication by Word Frequency Profile4.3. Differences in Translational Language4.3.1. Conjunction Use4.3.2. Passive Voice5. Conclusion6. Work Schedule (The date indicated is th

32、e deadline for each stage) 24th Oct -14th Nov.2011: Meet supervisors and discuss possible topics and references.17th Nov. 2011: Decide on the topic and start writing the Research Proposal and Literature Review.12th Dec. 2011: Defend the Research Proposal.30th Dec.2011: Finish the Literature Review.1

33、3th Feb. 2012: Finish the first draft of the thesis.13th Apr. 2012: Finish the second draft based on the feedback.28th Apr 2012: Finish the final draft.7th May 2012: Defend the thesis.25th May 2012: Finish the follow-up work.7. References1 Baker, Mona. “Corpus Linguistics and Translation Studies: Implication and Application” A. Text and Technology C. Ed. Mona Baker. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1993. 233-250.2 Baker, Mona. “Corpora in Translation Stu