The translator's visibility: A stylistic perspective

Abstract

No agreement has yet been reached as to whether translators are visible or not in translation. To answer this question, we first chose Lin Yutang and James Legge as cases, supplemented their translations with their originals, and then applied Principal Component Analysis along with N-MFW metrics to the texts for their stylistic features. In our cases, we found that (1) for each translator, the styles of their originals and translations vary; (2) for both translators, the styles of their translations converge for the same source text; (3) the two translators preserve only part of their stylistic fingerprints in their translations, suggesting the existence of a powerful compensation mechanism. Our findings bring new insights into the translator's style, help settle the (in)visibility dispute, and illustrate effective metrics for developing translator identification tools.