A Corpus-based Narrative Study Of Four English Versions Of Fu Sheng Liu Ji

Fu Sheng Liu Ji,an autobiographical prose written by Shen Fu in 1808,has well-recognized literary and aesthetic values.It has been translated into various languages,including four English versions,namely Six Chapters of a Floating Life by Lin Yutang(1936),Chapters from a Floating Life: The Autobiography of a Chinese Artist by Shirley M.Black(1960),Six Records of a Floating Life by Leonard Pratt and Chiang Su-hui(1983),and Six Records of a Life Adrift by Graham Sanders(2011).In previous studies,there is a lack of qualitative and quantitative comparative research on the four English versions.In addition,they mainly focused on the content of the text,without much attention to paratexts.Therefore,this thesis makes a qualitative and quantitative study of the four English versions of Fu Sheng Liu Ji,involving both the text and the paratext of each version.There are three questions to explore in this thesis: 1)What are the narrative features of the four English versions of Fu Sheng Liu Ji and their influence on the acceptance of the four versions? 2)What are the narrative strategies of text and paratext in the four English versions of Fu Sheng Liu Ji and their influence on the construction and spreading of international narratives? 3)What are the influencing factors of translation strategies of the English versions?This thesis first adopts the corpus research technology to analyze the corpus of the four English versions of Fu Sheng Liu Ji,to get the narrative features of the four versions.The thesis finds that the four versions have weak nominalization tendency,low formality,and strong readability.The average sentence length of Lin’s version,Pratt and Chiang’s version,and Black’s version are all between that of Translational English Corpus(TEC)and Brown Corpus(Brown),a native English literature corpus,which indicates that the three versions are in line with the characteristics of the translational English text.However,the average sentence length of Sanders’ s version is slightly longer than that of Brown,which means that it more caters to the linguistic habits of English readers.After qualitative analysis,this thesis qualitatively analyzes the narrative strategies of the four English versions of Fu Sheng Liu Ji based on Mona Baker’s narrative theory.Firstly,the four versions used “temporal and spatial framing” to adapt to the habits of the target readers according to the Gregorian calendar.Secondly,translators used different methods to realize selective appropriation of textual material by omission or addition.Thirdly,translators emphasized the emotion of Shen Fu as the narrator and the protagonist by “repositioning of participants”.Lin and Sanders also repositioned the focus of the event of the source text.Finally,translators framed the characters in versions by naming the characters.In addition,each version used various paratexts as its own auxiliary narrative strategies.Finally,the thesis analyzes the factors influencing narrative strategies of the four versions,including the social and historical context,the influence of target readers,translator’s cultural identity,and translator’s personal aesthetic and purpose.In summary,this thesis,combining quantitative analysis and qualitative analysis,enriches the research methods of four English versions of Fu Sheng Liu Ji.It also expands the research perspective by its study of paratexts and analyzes the influencing factors of translation strategies more comprehensively from the perspective of the narrative features and narrative strategies of versions.