Narrative Construction In The English Translation Of The History Of The Communist Party Of China

Translation of CPC history plays a pivotal role in communicating stories about China’s revolution,development and reform to the international community.It also affords valuable insights to China’s ongoing initiative to build its own discourse and narrative systems.However,translation of CPC history and the narrative effects of this cross-lingual,cross-cultural transmission were underexplored.In addition,emerging post-classical narratologies that foreground the role of readers and their narrative experience were undervalued.This dissertation therefore focuses on translation of CPC history as part of the formerly underexplored genre of non-fictional historical narratives with a close attention to readers’ narrative experience.Informed by rhetorical narrative theory that devotes greater attention to readers than other post-classical narratologies,it strives to specify translation-relevant factors of three narratological dimensions of readers’ narrative experience(narrative reliability,narratorial perceptibility and narratorial involvement)in narrative of CPC history,explored the effects the translator’s translation decisions and linguistic choices have on target language(TL)readers’ narrative judgments,and uncover the implications for future translation of CPC history.It aims to answer the following research questions:(1)What are the narratological factors that affect narrative reliability,narratorial perceptibility and narratorial involvement in translated narratives of CPC history?(2)How do the translator’s translation decisions and linguistic choices affect narrative reliability,narratorial perceptibility and narratorial involvement in TL narratives? How do they affect TL readers’ interpretative,ethical and aesthetic judgments?(3)What problems arise in the translator’s translation decisions and linguistic choices? What causes those problems? What implications can be drawn for future translation of CPC history? For such purposes,A Concise History of the Communist Party of China: Seventy Years of the CPC was selected as the target text for which an analytical process was followed from identification of translational phenomena,revelation of effects to discussion of implications.In order to shed light on the translator’s narrative construction,their effects on TL readers’ narrative experience and translational implications,inductive-deductive analysis,micro-analysis and descriptive-prescriptive analysis were adopted.The findings are as follows:(1)Narrative reliability in translated historical narratives of the CPC is affected by the translator’s reliable fulfilment of the TL narrator’s reporting,interpreting and evaluating functions,narratorial perceptibility by the translator’s reenacted modes of speech representation,mediation of narratorial commentaries and presentation of story existents,and narratorial involvement by the translator’s constructed narrative distance of the TL narrator from narrated historical events and historical characters.(2)With respect to narrative construction of narrative reliability in target language narrative,reporting reliability is shaped by the translator’s contextual,thematic and logical constructions,interpreting reliability by horizontal frame operation and vertical frame operation,and evaluating reliability by representation and construction of the source language(SL)narrator’s attitudes in terms of affect,judgment and appreciation.In regard to narrative construction of narratorial perceptibility in TL narrative,the degree of perceptibility of the TL narrator is altered through reenactment of free direct discourse,the “blend” modes of speech representation,and speech representation with quotation phenomenon(“q”forms),through mediation of felt narratorial presence in commentaries of interpretation and judgment types,and through embedded descriptions of historical settings and historical characters regulated by the mode,content and intensity of narratorial intrusion.In terms of narrative construction of narratorial involvement in TL narrative,narrative distance between the TL narrator and historical events is regulated by a repositioning of the TL narrator’s temporospatial point of view against a narrative now-point and by a realignment of the TL narrator’s temporospatial point of view to the basic narrative line of historical events,while narrative distance between the TL narrator and historical characters is reshaped by mediation of the TL narrator’s distance to historical characters in terms of identity and quoted discourse.The translation decisions and linguistic choices that brought those changes to fore exert influences on TL narrative’s coherence,narrativity,narrative tempo and speed,plot,characterization,point of view,focalization,and other narrative elements,and with such changes in narrative effects,guide TL readers’ interpretative,ethical and aesthetic judgments.(3)Problems that arise through an analysis of translated narratives of CPC history include an insufficient understanding,identification and analysis of SL narrative strategies and effects,failure to establish principled and effective translation norms,and random or inadvertent uses of translation strategies in narrative construction.They can be mainly attributed to a lack of theoretical understanding of narrative strategies and their effects in CPC historical narratives,susceptibility to disruptive disturbances of linguistic forms and narrative strategies in SL narrative,and an inadequate command of diverse lexicogrammatical resources to bring about intended narrative purposes and effects.As a means of remedy,theoretical learning and training in narratology,stylistics,linguistics and other fields are proposed to facilitate sensitivity to and identification of narrative strategies and effects at the stage of source text analysis and promote the translator’s exercise of subjectivity at the stage of target text production by enriching his/her narrative strategies and lexicogrammatical resources at his/her disposal to proactively achieve intended narrative effects and guide TL readers’ narrative judgments in a desirable direction.In addition,practical guidelines,translation standards and/or style guides for the three narrative experience dimensions should be experimented and established to build working translation norms that are principled,reliable and effective.This research’s experimental foray into the underexplored genre of narrative opens up new genre-specific possibilities in translation studies on political texts,CPC central documents in particular.By facilitating a rewarding fusion of classical narratology and post-classical narratologies in enriching narrative approaches to translation studies,it provides practical reference points for analysis of SL narrative text,evaluation of translation products,and translator competence training specifically for translation of CPC history,thus building theoretically sound,practically feasible principles and strategies to tell good stories about CPC history.