A Study On The Modernity Of The Translated Fiction In The Short Story Magazine (1921-1931)

Modernity as a world-wide phenomenon and a comprehensive academic study has been widely applied to different disciplines nowadays.This dissertation attempts to make an investigation from the perspective of modernity of the translated fiction in The Short Story Magazine(1921-193l),one of the longest and most influential periodicals in modern literature.Within this framework,the translated fiction study is interpreted as a literary and cultural practice in the transformation of Chinese society in the 1920's and not merely in the linguistic aspect,namely,a simple transformation between languages.The study intends to demonstrate what elements are contributed to construct modernity of the translated fiction ranging from the modern vernacular Chinese in translation,modes of the translated text,criteria for the selection of stories,to the subjectivities of the translators and the foreignization in transferring the narrative modes of Western fiction to the target language.The dissertation consists of six chapters.Chapter one reviews the definitions of the theory of modernity,which is further characterized as reform,innovation,progress and development in this research.On the basis of the definition,the modernity of the translated fiction in The Short Story Magazine is proposed.Moreover,it serves as a general review of the existent research achievements relevant to our study and offers a general account of what motivates and triggers our research and what objective we are going to reach.Chapter two discusses about the theme of the translated fiction,translation strategies and Lin Shu's translation in The Short Story Magazine(1910-1920)before the reform.The purpose of the study is to emphasize the close relation between the two phases of this magazine as the background to our research.We believe that the translation action in the earlier phase of this magazine can be basically interpreted as the starting point of the modernity of the translated fiction.In addition,it also focuses on the comments from the readers on the Western literary theory of naturalism introduced by Shen Yanbing.It is believed that translating and introducing naturalism can be regarded as one of the most effective approaches to reforming the backward literature in 1920's and its modernization lies in influencing and promoting the development of Chinese New Literature. Chapter three is designed to explore from the microscopical aspect the translation strategies and approaches applied in The Short Story Magazine.Firstly it deals with how"literal translation"became the main strategy in 1920's instead of adaptation popular and dominant in Lin Shu's translation.The author points out that adaptation,catering mainly for the then readers' tastes in the earlier phase of The Short Story Magazine,violates the standard of"truthfulness"in translation,which is not acceptable in the late phase of this magazine.Thus,to reestablish the dominant position of"literal translation"in The Short Story Magazine signifies the construction of modern translation principles.Secondly,"indirect translation",a supplementary approach to direct translation,is also analyzed in this chapter.The indirect translation played an important role in introducing the literature of the downtrodden nations. Different from the indirect translation mostly from Japanese in the late Qing and earlier Republican periods,the translated literature from the small and weak nations in 1920's was introduced in English and Esperanto.The author points out that the purpose of this translation trend is mainly because of politics rather than literary arts.In addition,the third section of this chapter is concerned with the editors' different literary and aesthetic attidutes that contribute to the different standards in choosing translation targets in the late phase of this magazine.Chapter four demonstrates the functions of Europeanization in translation in the initial stage of modern vernacular Chinese.During the changing period of classical Chinese into modern Chinese,the translators incline to draw on language resources in translation to promote the development of the target language.Based on the results of the survey in our research,we think that the Europeanized language in the translated fiction in The Short Story Magazine has changed and increased the ways of expressions in the target language,but there is no denying the fact that Europeanization also has hybridized Chinese language.The discussion here throws light on our better understanding and objective evaluation of Europeanization in the reform of modern Chinese.The fifth chapter makes an exploration of modernity of the translated fiction in terms of textual analysis from macroscopical aspects.Based upon the survey in this research,the author points out that the publication of the translated fiction in this magazine marks the dominance of short stories and establishes a model for Chinese New Literature to follow.As for the choice of translation target,we can see that at first more emphasis is laid on the social function of the foreign fiction,but later more attention is paid to literary arts,which is the result from the editors' different translation orientation and the literary principles of Literature Research Association.Compared with the translation action in the late Qing and earlier Republican periods,we can see that over emphasis of the plot of the story causes the reform of the criteria of The Short Story Magazine in choosing stories.The modernity lies in not simply catering for the readers' tastes,but paying more attention to drawing on resources to reform the society.Similarly,modernity of the translated fiction can also be discovered in transferring the narrative structure of the Western stories to the target language.Different from the earlier translators preferring to change the narrative structure in the target language by means of domestication to ensure the readability of the translated works,the translators in the late phase of The Short Story Magazine tend to transfer the original narrative structure of the Western stories to the target language by means of foreignization.This chapter concludes that from domestication to foreignization in transferring the Western narrative structure and from passive to active manipulation of the narrative modes in the target language,the change of the translation strategy manifests the acceptance of the Western narrative style and great promotion of the Chinese New Literature.Chapter six is a summary of the new ideas on modernity of the translated fiction of The Short Story Magazine.From the perspective of modernity,this dissertation has presented a new approach to reevaluating the translated literature published on the issues of the periodicals,which has been ignored in the existent research on modern translation history.Moreover,application of the theory of modernity to translation studies has its enlightening value in reality that may help to solve the problems unanswered in the past studies of translation.