Framing Analysis

William A.Lyell and Julia Lovell have produced two entirely different versions of Lu Xun's fiction that remains canonical today.This research takes the two English translations as subjects to explore the two translators' framing of Lu Xun,his fiction and China.Expert reviews and customer reviews are also analyzed to examine how framing influences translation reception.It is found that Julia Lovell's latest translation enables a shift away from the literary qualities of Lu Xun's fiction,in which William A.Lyell demonstrates more interest,to the political importance of Lu Xun and his fiction and their relevance to modern China.On the operational level,framing is found realized in various ways.Lyell frames Lu Xun as a stylist mainly through annotation,repositioning of a series of his short stories and formal framing such as capitalization,italicization,textual segmentation and alternation in formality.Julia Lovell frames Lu Xun,his fiction and China in political and historical terms through visual framing,macro-level selection and salience of historical events for attention,micro-level repositioning and labelling,standardization,accommodation to target naming practices,downplaying and framing devices such as metaphors,comparisons,comments and citations.Meanwhile,a close examination of reviews indicates that expert readers tend to notice the two translators'framing tendencies while less sophisticated readers tend to be guided by their framing.It is suggested that advocating the "superiority of sinologists" without considering their positionality and the "application of domestication" without considering the risk of losing Chinese characteristics would be reductive and simplistic.In addition,Mona Baker's conception of framing is found problematic in that the definition of framing is too politically charged to be generally applicable,the four framing strategies may overlap,the activist sense of framing limits its application to examples of a political nature,and that interactions between "frames in communication" and "frames in thought" remain to be studied.