A Corpus-Based Study of the Differences between Translations of Famous Translators and Translation Learners

Under the background of the construction of new liberal arts, corpus-based translation studies fit the development trend. In order to investigate the differences between translations of translation learners and famous translators, this paper collects learners’ translations from the English-Chinese Translation Course at a university in Shanghai and various kinds of famous translators’ translations to form comparable corpora. Then it uses AntConc version 3.2.1 for data processing and Chi-Square and Log-likelihood Calculator to determine if there is a significant difference, and analyzes the differences with specific examples. The study finds that the translation learners use longer sentences and more “bei” indicating the passive tense and “de” showing possession than famous translators. The differences are significant, resulting in a decrease in the readability of the translations of the learners. Through the quantitative study of corpus data, the learners can reflect on weakness and improve translation competence; teachers can optimize translation lesson plans in response to the obvious differences.