A Corpus-Based Study on Creative Application of Nonce Words in Julia Lovell’s Translation of Lu Xun’s Novels

This article offers a systematic description of the creative use of nonce words (NWs) in Julia Lovell’s translation of Lu Xun’s novels to summarize regular patterns of NWs and to deepen the understanding of creativity in translation.A parallel corpus, consisting of the original text, Lovell’s translation and Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang’s translation, was built.Quantitative and qualitative methods were adopted, and interlingual and intralingual comparisons were carried out to investigate how NWs were used dynamically to contribute to the representation of literariness of Lu Xun’s novels in their English translations.Three kinds of NWs are identified in both translations, including derivative NWs, compound NWs and sound-imitation NWs.There exist significant differences in the total numbers between the two versions.Lovell’s translation is featured by its largest number of sound-imitation NWs.NWs add to defamiliarization of lexical form and enhance contextual adaptation of words in Lovell’s translation.With form as an important means of meaning representation, the literariness of Lu Xun’s novels is artistically represented.Lovell’s creative use of NWs comes from the patron’s demand of canonization and uniqueness of the translation of Lu Xun’s works, her view of "faithful recreation" in translation, as well as the importance she attaches to the readers’ reading experience.