| Binu, translated as Binu and the Great Wall by Howard Goldblatt, is a retelling of Chinese ancient lengend of Meng Jiangnv by the famous contemporary writer Su Tong. It is an impressive love story passed through generations about a woman’s bitterness and hardships on her way to send robe for her husband in the far-away north. It is the first novel which Chinese writers involve in the universal publishing program The Myth series. The English version Binu and the Great Wall was translated by the famous American sinologist and translator Howard Goldblatt and it was published in 2007. Binu was then translated into many other languages such as French, Korean, Finnish, and Slovak and so on. Retelling the myth is considered as a reconstruction of ancient civilization. This book represents the Chinese cultural image to the world. The image of Meng Jiangnv enables people to be aware of the ancient woman’s good character and the miserable pains that are brought to the people by war. However, domestic scholars concentrate mainly on such aspects as myth retelling and female culture. So far, there are no systematic comparative studies between this Chinese novel and its English version. Domestic and foreign scholars have not paid enough attention and concern with its English version and relevant translation problems.The theory of Narratology emerged in the 1960 s in France, experiencing the two stages of classical and postclassical Narratology. The studies of Narratology in China are the combination of the Chinese traditional literary theory and the Western theoretical sources. This paper explores the representation of the narrative skills in the translated version and analyzes the translator’s translation strategies from related theoretical perspectives of Narratology such as narrative point of view, speech presentation, characterization and narrative structure, trying to testify whether Howard Goldblatt’s English translation of this book has reproduced the unique narrative skills and realized the narrative function of the original work.Through the comparative analysis between the original and the English translation version, the study concludes that the English translation Binu and the Great Wall conforms to the original work to a large extent from the perspectives of narrative point of view and speech presentation, in which the translator endeavors to faithfully represent the narrative methods of the Chinese version. Regarding to the aspect of characterization from appearance, action and analogy, this comparative study concludes that the translator tries to construct an ideal and noble Chinese female image to the target readers with translation strategies of paraphrasing, cultural ellipsis and contrasting. In narrative structure, the translator makes more alterations, adopting translation strategies of partial adjustment and reorganization of events, deletion of non-narrative contents. This not only keeps the coherence and logic of the story but also conforms to the reading habits of target readers. Generally speaking, Professor Howard Goldblatt’s translation has successfully reproduced the narrative features of the original, with the realization of equivalence in literary and aesthetic levels.The translation of Chinese literature is a significant means of cultural transmission and an important window of Chinese civilization to the world. Taking the narratological approach to literature translation studies and analyzing the narrative features of both the source text and target text contribute to building a more scientific and objective standard for translation criticism and researches. The discussions from the perspective of Narratology broaden the channels of literature translation studies which inspire to find the best way for continual process of Chinese contemporary literature to the outside world and its overseas transportation. |
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