The Translation And Reception Of The First-Person Narrative In Early Modern China

The turn of 20th century has witnessed a boom of literary translation in China. Related researches in the past years can be categorized into two types. Researches of the first type were done mainly in the field of translation, focusing on the intralinguistic study of the translations and on the skills of the individual translators. Researches of the second type viewed the translations as part of the history in Chinese literature. However, researchers of the former type, applying the contemporary criterion "faithfulness" to the evaluation of the translations produced against the then historical background, have reached the conclusion that the translators at that time were unfaithful to the originals and ignorant of western literature and culture. On the other hand, researchers of the latter type have concerned themselves principally with the impacts of translations on the native literary development while neglecting the complicated reasons that lie behind the impacts. This thesis thus takes the translation and reception of the first-person narrative as the objective, so as to obtain a comprehensive understanding of the translations at that time from a new perspective. The research, starting with collecting large amount of the translation works, is to present an objective and historical description of the Chinese translation and reception of the first-person narrative by incorporating into the main body the Translations Studies, the Narratology and the Cultural Studies, aiming at the representation of the mutual impacts between the translations and the native literary norms.The thesis consists of 5 chapters. After a brief review of Translation Studies developed both at home and abroad, chapter 1 claims to the necessity of reconsidering the translations at late 19th and early 20th centuries with a descriptive and target-oriented approach, and highlights the significance of the research into the Chinese translation and reception of the first-person narrative. Chapter 2 defines the first-person narrative in fiction and compares the differences in narrative voice between traditional Chinese fictions and those in Europe at the specific period discussed hereafter, which, nonetheless, could explain in brief the problems those translators hadencountered in the process of translating. Chapter 3 continues to discuss the translation strategies the translators had employed and the reasons underlying from a socio-cultural point of view. A case study is conducted for further in-depth investigation. Chapter 4 contributes to a diachronic presentation of the historical line of the Chinese acceptance in translations as well as in native fiction writings. And at last, the thesis ends with chapter 5, serving as a conclusion supposedly to generalize all the studies made thus far.