In pursuit of the "third code": A study of translation universals based on the ZCTC corpus of translational Chinese

As a language variant translational language is distinct from both the source and target native languages,and is hence referred to as the "third code" in Frawley(1984).This article explores the potential lexical and syntactical features of translational Chinese on the basis of two balanced comparable corpora of translated and native Chinese,namely the ZJU Corpus of Translational Chinese(ZCTC) and the Lancaster Corpus of Mandarin Chinese(LCMC).The results suggest that 1) in comparison with native Chinese,translational Chinese has a lower lexical density,particularly a lower ratio of lexical words v.function words;2) translated Chinese makes more frequent use of conjunctions,thus demonstrating a tendency for explicitation;and 3) the use of passives in Chinese translations is affected by English source texts,thus casting doubt upon the normalisation hypothesis.