A Study Of The Narrative Discourse In The English Translation Of Tales Of Hulan River

This thesis investigates the fidelity and infidelity generated in the representation of narrative discourse from the three aspects of time, narrative mode and narrative voice in the English translation of Tales of Hulan River. The research purpose is to arouse the translators’ attention to narrative discourse and its representation strategies, and to provide some suggestions for the translation of Chinese literary works.The theory employed in this thesis was narrative discourse. Narrative discourse covers a broad range, including time, mode, perspective, voice and so on. This thesis mainly probed into the three aspects of time, the narrative mode of "showing" and "telling," and narrative voice. In translation studies, time touches upon the rearrangement of story time in the text. The narrative modes of "showing" and "telling" shape narrative distance, character’s personality and scene depiction. Narrative voice deals with the construction of the identities of the narrator and the reproducing of the narrative voice.This thesis made a comparative reading of Hsiao Hung’s representative work, Tales ofHulan River, and its English translation by Howard Goldblatt. After comparing the three aspects of narrative discourse including time, narrative mode and narrative voice between the source text and the target text, it was discovered that both fidelity and infidelity were generated in rendering the narrative discourse. Then, the author undertook judgment sampling to collect examples that manifested fidelity and infidelity respectively, conducted case study to analyze the different effects achieved, and made conclusions. This thesis was comprised of five chapters. Chapter One illustrated the rationale, significance, methodology and organization of the thesis. Chapter Two reviewed previous studies of Tales of Hulan River and its translation, and proposed that the theory of narrative discourse should be adopted to inspect the rendering of its unique narrative features. Chapter Three traced the development of narratology and its application in translation studies and highlighted how to study the rendering of narrative discourse from the three aspects of time, narrative mode and narrative voice. Chapter Four probed into fidelity from the two aspects of time and the narrative mode of dialogues. Moreover, infidelity was also analyzed in this chapter from the rendering of voice, and the narrative mode of scene depiction. Chapter Five summarized the conclusions, and pointed out the implications and limitations.The study of the rendering of narrative discourse in the target text revealed that both fidelity and infidelity occurred in translation. The representation of time and the rendering of the "showing" mode of dialogues manifested fidelity and infidelity generally lay in the representation of narrative voice and the "showing" mode of scene depiction. It then concluded that "fidelity" contributed to the introduction of Chinese literature and culture and infidelity impaired the rendering of narrative discourse.Although the author has spared every effort to make the current study an objective and comprehensive one, it is subject to limitations. First, the research results are only applicable to Howard Goldblatt’s English translation of Tales of Hulan River. Second, it is possible that this thesis has left out some important aspects of narrative discourse as it is mainly inspired by Genette’s classification. Third, it only makes textual analysis and may omit other factors, including the cultural and ideological ones. Therefore, researchers are encouraged to study the English translation of Tales of Hulan River from other perspectives or to inquire more into the theory of narrative discourse so as to examine other texts.Narrative discourse makes an indispensable part of the "literariness" of literary works and plays a crucial role in reproducing the narrative features, themes, character personalities and aesthetic effects of the source text. Therefore, in translation, translators should try his or her best to achieve "fidelity" rather than "infidelity" in rendering the narrative discourse. Hopefully, this thesis could contribute to the translation of Chinese literary works.