Judith Amory’s Reproduction Of Satire In Her Translation Of Baptism

Baptism is a novel by Yang Jiang in 1980 and has had a great influence in China since its publication.One of the prominent features of the novel is its profound satire between the lines.So to speak,satire is the overall writing style of the novel.The novel depicts a group of vivid intellectuals’ images through satire.Thus whether the satire of the original is creatively reproduced in translation becomes a key factor in judging whether the translation is successful or not.The novel was co-translated into English by American translators Judith Amory and Shi Yaohua in 2007.The translators reproduce the original satire to some extent,and represent,rather faithfully,the original images of intellectuals in their translation.The whole satire of Baptism is realized through accumulation of many images,so the discussion of the translation should be focused on the strategies the translators adopt to reproduce the original images in translation creatively,which is the key to discuss the creative reproduction of the original satire by translators.This thesis uses R.W.Langacker’s imagery theory to explore the Judith Amory’s translation through the profiling of the original image in reproduction of the original satiric effect.The thesis analyzes the effect of satire in the original and translators’reproduction of characterization of some characters such as Yu Nan,Xu Yancheng,Jiang Min,Zhu Qianli,and Nina Shi.The study finds that the translation is not intact mechanical reproduction of the original text.The translators characterize the characters creatively according to their understanding to the original.For example,they weaken Yu Nan’s selfishness and hypocrisy,and strengthen his pretentiousness;they strengthen Xu Yancheng’s betrayal of his marriage and weaken Jiang Min’s mordancy;they strengthen Nina Shi’s bossiness and weaken Zhu Qianli’s conceit.The remolding of the characters leads to the change of the relationship among the characters in this novel.The sharp contradiction between the characters in the original text is alleviated and the sharp conflict has achieved a certain degree of balance in the translation.Thus,the translators reproduce the satire in the original works creatively by changing the imagery of the original works.They create a world which is slightly different from the world which is created by the writer in the original.This study presents the reproduction of imagery at the micro level.The author finds that the change of the imagery leads to the change of the whole satire,which causes the change of the characterization and the relationship among the characters.Therefore,it can be concluded that the translators’ construal and some objective differences between languages lead to the difference between the translation and the original to a certain extent.