Top 30 Keywords from a Bilingual Corpus of Translated Chinese Children's Literature

A 398,531-word bilingual corpus supports a study of translator Nicky Harman's style in rendering contemporary Chinese children's novels into English. The dataset contains the top thirty keywords from the novel 'I Want to Be Good' (translated in 2020), derived from a mixed-methods analysis of lexical, syntactic, and textual features. Author He He published the data on figshare under a CC-BY-4.0 license.

Use Cases

• Analyzing translator's lexical preferences based on keyword frequency data.
• Studying stylistic choices in literary translation for a young readership as described in the study.
• Investigating the balance of domestication and foreignization strategies in translated idioms.
• Examining the use of contracted forms and specific collocations as markers of translator style.

Strengths

• Derived from a defined bilingual corpus of 398,531 words total.
• Focuses on a specific, named translator and two translated novels.
• Results are linked to a mixed-methods research approach integrating quantitative and qualitative analysis.

Limitations

• The dataset is very small at 9.5 KB, indicating limited scope.
• Row count and specific column definitions are unknown, requiring inspection after download.
• Description metadata is limited; actual data quality requires manual inspection after download.

Provenance

Source

Author He He, via figshare.

Collection Method

Created via keyword analysis from a self-built bilingual parallel and comparable corpus.

Time Range

Based on novels published in 1996 and 2018, translated in 2020 and 2023.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-06-02 17:39:02; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Covers Chinese source literature translated for English readers.