A Comparative Study of Sentiment Words in Literary TranslationA Case Study of Who Do You Think You Are and Its Chinese Translations

Based on the English-Chinese parallel corpus of Munro’s novel Who Do You Think You Are, this paper makes a comparative study of the sentiment words (SW), as well as the stylistic features reflected by them, of the original text and its two Chinese translations by Liao Xiuyu and Deng Ruoxu respectively. It employs text sentiment analysis, combining both quantitative and qualitative methods. The results show that the three texts are different from each other in three aspects: namely “SW density (SWD)”, “SW strength (SWS)” and sentimental flow pattern (SFP). The two translations are higher than the original text in SWD, but lower in SWS, especially among negative sentiment words. This is largely due to the employment of amplification, mitigation, omission, incorporation, conversion, etc. in the two translations. The two translations mainly differ in the usage of negative sentiment words, which chiefly results from the different preferences in the adoption of sentiment words with different parts of speech or strength. There is a significant difference in the negative SFP among the three texts. The reasons behind the differences can be attributed to the Chinese-Western cultural identity, geographical backgrounds of the two translators, translation strategies, etc. This study adds a new dimension to translation stylistics by exploreing the translations at the sentimental level.