On Chinese Translation Of The Great Gatsby—from The Perspective Of Narratology

Francis Scott Fitzgerald, an outstanding American novelist in the twentieth century, is regarded as the poet laureate of Jazz Age in America, whose representative work, The Great Gatsby, is regarded as one of the greatest English novels in the twentieth century. For exquisite expressions, strong effect and outstanding style of the language, this novel is also very popular with Chinese readers. Since the first Chinese version of the work was born in the mainland in1983, various versions of the work have emerged and some versions have been even published once and again, while the research on the versions of this classic is not extensive in China. Therefore, taking Yao Naiqiang’s version, a relatively popular and well-received version for example, this thesis makes a systematic analysis of the version from the perspective of narratology. And to explore the important role narratology plays in achieving an equivalence translation and thus confirm the guiding role of the theory in the field of literary translation.Narratology is a new kind of theory improved by structuralism in the sixties of the20th century and can be regarded as the new orientation of contemporary literary theory as it possesses great theoretical potential. It is a study of the essence, form and function of narration and it includes researches on narration, narrative speech, narrative action, narrative point of view and some other aspects, basically within the range of narrative literary works. Novel is the central object of study of narratology: as on plot level, theorists focus on the structure of the incident and character; and as on discourse level, the relationship between narrator and story, time arrangement, the perspective to observe the story and so on are the major focuses. The choice of narrative type in a novel can show the creative intention and aesthetic expectation of the author. Therefore, in novel translation, the translator should not only convey the original content but also reflect the aesthetic effects embodied from the style and structure of the original work. A translation that includes only the basic information but misses the structure of language of the author cannot be regarded successful.By comparing Yao Naiqiang’s translation with the original work of Fitzgerald’s, the author has reached the conclusion that the translation is equivalent to the original from aspects of narrative point of view, narrative speech, and it faithfully and vividly presents the original style and aesthetic value and achieves the same reading effect. At the present stage there haven’t been enough researches or papers on translation criticism in the framework of the narratological theory. Therefore, by analyzing the Chinese version of The Great Gatsby from the aspect of narratology, the author of the present paper hopes to arouse more attention to the translation of Fitzgerald’s works.