CORPUS - BASED EMPIRICAL STUDY OF WEAKNING AND STRENGTHENING IN THE SAPNISH TRANSLATION OF THE CHINESE ADVERB OF DEGREE “很”

Abstract

Based on the corpus method, this article applies quantitative statistics and qualitative analysis to explore the weakening and strengthening tendencies in the translation of the adverb of degree “很” in six modern Chinese literary works. The result shows that: (1) the equivalence and weakening are more prominent than strengthening in general; (2) the weakening in reverse translations is more eminent than that in the direct ones. The motivations fall into two categories: linguistic factors and translator factor. The linguistic factors are mainly reflected in the ambiguity of the semantic intensity of the adverbs of degree, their semantic degeneration and the limitation of the expression rules of Spanish. The translator factor is mainly determined in the active intervention of the translator. We verify the differences between Chinese and Spanish languages, provide a theoretical guide for literary translation activities. This work is also a complement to the research on general characters of the Spanish translation language.