A Study Of The Translation Of Mu Si Lin De Zang Li From The Narratological Perspective

Mu Si Lin De Zang Li is the representative novel of the prominent female writer-Huo Da. Being the first novel successfully depicting the real life and traditional culture of the Hui nationality, it has always been highly praised by scholars and well-received by readers ever since its publication and has also won many important awards including the Third Mao Dun Literature Award. It has thus occupied a unique literary status and possessed a high aesthetic value. Narrative features of this novel can be rated as its typical characteristic such as distinctive narrative structure, lively characterization and novel narrative image all of which contribute a lot to the success of this novel. However, although the English version of this novel was published and included in the trans-culture communication book series--"Panda Books" in1987, yet it did not arouse the similar attention in the English-speaking world as the original did in the Chinese-speaking world. Many factors can account for this, yet the author of this thesis merely attempts to investigate the causes of its unpopularity from a narratological perspective, and tries to explore whether or not the ingenious narrative techniques and its narrative functions has been reproduced in the translation.Initiating from France in the1960s, the development of narratology has now gone through two phases:classic narratology and post-classic narratology. Narratological studies in China have gained insights from both traditional Chinese literature theories and western narratological theories. Based on the theories relative to narratology and a detailed investigation of the translation strategy adopted by the translator, this thesis plans to explore the transformation of the narrative techniques and the narrative function in the translation from the following aspects:characterization, narrative image and narrative structure.Six chapters are included in this thesis. Chapter one briefly introduces the research background, research meaning, the problems to be solved and the methodologies to be adopted. Chapter two is a literature review. In this part, the research status of the English version and the application of narratology in translation study will be introduced. The third chapter is a theoretical framework introduction. The historical development of narratology and some concepts of narratology will be explained in this part such as narrative image, narrative structure, and characterization. Chapter four is a simple description of the writer and the background information of the translation. Chapter five is the central part. A detail analysis of the translation will be made from the perspective of narrative image, narrative structure and characterization to explore whether or not the transformation of the narrative features causes the variation of narrative function. Chapter six is the conclusion summarizing the whole thesis. Through investigation, it is finally found that compared to the original text, considerable transformation of narrative function has occurred in the translation, which then exerts a negative influence on its acceptance abroad.