The present research aims to investigate, using corpus-based methods, the phenomenon of simplification in translated, compared to non-translated, Chinese texts. Simplification in translation can be manifested in the following three levels: translated texts tend to display a shorter average sentence length, draw on a more restricted vocabulary and contain a lower information load, than non-translated texts in the same language. The manifestations may be quantified through corpus-based methods of comparative analysis, measuring: 1) mean sentence length; 2) lexical variety with type/token ratio, percentage of high frequency words and percentage of list heads; and 3) information load with lexical density. A corpus of modem Chinese mystery fiction (CCCM) has been compiled especially for the purpose of the current project, with two subcorpora of translated and non-translated mystery fiction.