A Study On English Translation Of Chinese Short-short Story

The short-short story, concise and easy in style, yet profound in meaning, can provide much enjoyment and enlightenment to its readers and thus becomes popular among its wide range of readers. In recent years, a large number of excellent Chinese short-short stories have been translated into English and the publications have been well-received overseas.Narratology carries out systematic researches on narrative fiction from various perspectives, like the point of view, reporting modes and time so as to probe into the relationship between the narrative form and the narrative effect in a given context, hence being regarded as a powerful tool in analysis of narrative texts. In China, scholars like Zheng Minyu and Fang Kairui apply narrative theories to fiction translation. They are interested in how narrative forms of the original text can be reproduced in the target language to obtain the equivalence in narrative effects. What they have achieved is significant in that it enriches and develops the existing theories of translation.The short-short story, one of the four members of the fiction family, has its first and foremost features in narration. Therefore, the analysis of short-short stories and of their translations, the author of this thesis believes, can not be done properly without narratology. According to narratology, translations of short-short stories should remain loyal to the original texts, not only in content and language but also in narrative devices.The thesis will mainly study the narrative features of Chinese short-short story in terms of the point of view, reporting modes and time and will describe C-E translation methods, based upon detailed analysis of the highly-praised English versions of a few Chinese short-short stories. The author of this thesis holds it that the present study is meaningful to some extent as it reveals the narrative features of Chinese short-short story, describes useful techniques for translation practice and broadens the sphere of narratological researches. However, the author is also well aware that the study is inadequate in both depth and width because short-short stories are both flexible in writing and context-dependable in translating, making it hard to carry objectively quantitative analysis.