How different is translated Chinese from native Chinese? A corpus-based study of translation universals

Corpus-based translation studies focus on translation as a product by comparing comparable corpora of translational and non-translational texts. A number of distinctive features of translational English in relation to native English have been uncovered. Nevertheless, research of this area has so far been confined largely to translational English translated from closely related European languages. If the features of translational language that have been reported on the basis of translated English are to be generalized as 'translation universals', it is of vital importance to find supporting evidence from non-European languages. Clearly, evidence from "genetically" distinct language pairs such as English and Chinese is arguably more convincing, if not indispensable. This article explores potential features of translational Chinese on the basis of two balanced monolingual comparable corpora of translated and native Mandarin Chinese. The implications of the study for translation universal hypotheses are also discussed.