A Study On The English Translation Of Lenin's Kisses & The Four Books From The Perspective Of General Rhetoric

The constant and systematic English translation of Yan Linake's works began with Lenin's Kisses in 2012 and The Four Books in 2015,which are among Yan's most representative novels.They are widely different in subject matters and writing styles,which are of great value in language,literature and culture.We follow with our interest the translation methods and strategies that the translator used to reproduce the target texts.The study will explore the English translation of Lenin's Kisses and The Four Books by Calos Rojas from the perspective of General Rhetoric proposed by Chinese scholars Tan Xuechun and Zhuling.We hope to expand the field of translation studies and contribute to the systematic construction of translation rhetoric by taking full advantage of the interdisciplinarity and knowledge resources between translation studies and rhetoric.Chinese rhetoric tradition had been valuing the techniques of composing and organizing,such as rhythm-tuning,word-searching(diction),figure-of-speech-employing,text-arranging as well as genre and style,etc.While Western rhetoric,with argumentation and persuasion as its core,was once an art of speech.It has been breaking through the traditional barrier and fully evolving into multidisciplinarity through the past thousands of years by casting its eyes over all the aspects of the fields of human speech and non-speech,thought and behavior,such as cognitive,visuality/auditority and art,etc.After years of prosperity and silence of the restricted rhetoric,modern Chinese rhetoric has achieved the great breakthrough of the general rhetoric,which transforms,from a mono-discipline of being language-oriented and skill-centered,into an inter-discipline of being people-oriented,exploring its development from a broader background of social humanities,psychological thinking and even natural existence,etc.Generalized rhetoric concerns over the cognitiveness of rhetoric,the study of man and his rhetorized existence.The research objects of restricted rhetoric(as figures of speech,style,etc.)are not excluded in general rhetoric,and the realm of the restricted is further deepened and expanded,which reflects“the divergent thinking,consciousness of harmony and humanistic concern of researchers"(???,2012a:I).The three levels of generalized rhetoric include rhetorical technique,referring to the construction of discourse(language fragments),rhetorical poetic,the construction of text,and rhetorical philosophy,man's spiritual construction,which provides a theoretical basis for the study.The study of the English translation of rhetoric techniques in Lenin's Kisses and The Four Books focuses mainly on the rhetoric of dialect,the rhetoric of variation and the figures of speech.The English translation of dialects is explored from the three ways of literal translation,word-coining and hybrid translation.Through the ways of literal translation and word-coining,the fractured and defamiliarized text is fabricated with obscure and difficult expressions to highlight the regionalism and the heterogeneity of dialects,reproducing the unique discourse system and the marginalized living conditions of the villagers'.For proper nouns,the chronological system of traditional Chinese sixty-year “stem-and-branch” cycle,traditional Chinese units for length,weight,area,and so forth,and the invented names of flowers and plants,hybrid translation of the combination of English and Chinese pinyin is employed to achieves hybridity in language level and overall effect of defamiliarization.The significance of the variant discourses,say reduplicated variation,conversion and the mutation of syntactic structure can be well expressed mostly in the target text.However,their formal features are difficult to translate,which to some extent has an effect on the overall color,style and texture of the language.The well-designed forms of repetition and parallelism,which is the embodiment of the artistic and literary value of the works,are well retained through imitating the syntactic and rhetorical structure of the source text to restore the aesthetic effects of "power" and "form" of the original,such as rhythm and symmetrical form,etc.The study of English translation of rhetorical poetry is mainly discussed from the aspects of free direct speech,montage,and genre and stylistic.Free direct speech is effective to portray an image and is of stylistic value,which is mostly retained to well reproduce the expressive force of the speech presentation,while partly is transformed into other speeches,say direct or indirect speech.The latent-visible forms of speeches produce diverse sound effect,which reflects the contrast of virtual-real narrative,or different status of characters.The technique of montage is "reformed" according to realism,such as changing the subjects/places/contents of speeches,which results in the weakening of the flavor of “hallucinatory realism”.In stylistic respect,with the exception that the rhetorical form and the stylistically utility of those small words as Chinese rhotic accent,modal particles and the words of le is lost due to the linguistic differences and the expressive limitation of the target language,the text form of the “fluffy style”(the italic and bold text,free direct speech,etc.)and the dialectal tones are adequately rendered to represent the living state and the way the group construct their discourse,which relatively well support the stylistically resistant structure.In addition,the minor adjustment of the stem-and-branch system does not change its confused effect and hallucinatory flavor as a whole,and the translation still assist the fluffy style itself.As for the biblical and philosophical style,the language details and text spirit,such as the biblically concise and classical words,religious color,philosophical objectivity,abstractness and metaphysicalness,are carefully considered and well embodied in the selection of words,sentence patterns,voice and mood,etc.Because of the omission,addition,text adjustment,the characteristics of the original language and the translator's subjective factors,both translations tend to be simplified.Rhetorical philosophy involves the writer or the characters' outlooks towards world,life and value,etc.The study of the English translation of rhetorical philosophy is mainly conducted from the following three aspects of metaphor rhetoric,oppositional rhetoric and the subject of redemption to examine the translator's understanding of the thematic rhetoric and reproduction of the spiritual construction of the author and the characters.The metaphor of samsara and that of “Re-ed.” is employed to build the narrative structure of the two novels and strengthens readers' cognition of the style and characters of the works."Zero translation" of the stem-and-branch system and literal translation of the eight vegetative book titles reproduces the macro framework and the "cyclicity" of time.The “transmigrating” of destiny of Liu Yingque and the “circulating” of the village history from “enter society” to “withdraw from society” is reflected through maintaining the way of discourse representation and narrative structure of the original,which is employed in reproducing the metaphor installment of Re-ed in The Four Books from the three scenes of "books-burning"," adulterers-catching" and "wheat-feeding with blood".The rape and seduction of Grandma Mao zhi,Jumei and the four little nins by the wholers and their violent plunder of food and money from the villagers shows the fierce conflict between the abled flesh and the disabled body as well as the strong contrast between the evil inner and the pure soul.From the books burning to the ignorance of and blasphemy against religion,and to the conversion on the cross,it is the course of “redemption” that the Child has gone through,while the way of that for the Writer is to carve his inner guilt onto the outer body to seek spiritual peace and liberation,both of which are the writer's investigating into the spiritual salvation of intellectuals after the disaster and actually abnormal behaviors dominated by the same insane idea.On the basis of a thorough understanding of the original,the translator successfully reproduces the spiritual construction of the author and the characters in the target text through the rhetoric transformation,achieving the cognitive function of the thematic rhetoric.rhetorical technique and rhetorical poetic is mainly the artistry of works,while rhetorical philosophy is thematic and spiritual(???,2012a:III).They are not absolutely distinct from each other.At times,they intertwine and involve the three dimensions.Based on the theory of general rhetoric,the study makes a systematic observation of the English text of Lenin's Kisses and The Four Books by using descriptive way of translation and qualitative research of exemplification,which is highly subjective and even results in an inevitably biased understanding and interpretation of the texts apart from some topics to be deepened and expanded,where lies a more spacious opportunity for further research,especially for the systematic construction of translation rhetoric.