Target-Reader-Oriented Strategies For Translating English Narrative Discourse Of Chinese Events

In recent years, with the increasing of China ‘s international influence and the growth of communication between China and the West, plenty of non-literary narratives about Chinese cultural, political, economic events have been published in English and translated back into Chinese which provide Chinese readers with an outside perspective of observing China. Due to the different standpoint and attitude the author holds toward Chinese events, the unique ideological inclination and aesthetic expectations of English readers, and the differences in English and Chinese thinking habits, such narration of Chinese events in English naturally differs from Chinese domestic narrative and thus are called English Narrative Discourse of Chinese Events in this thesis. On China, written by Henry Kissinger, the former U.S. Secretary of State, and published by the Penguin Press i n 2011, is one of the representative works. It centers on Chinese events and issues which have had far-reaching impact on both China and the international community, and triggered extensive and heated discussion worldwide. And soon after its publication, it was translated into Chinese and its impact spread to common Chinese readers.Taking On China and its Chinese translation(?????)as research objects,this thesis probes into the two narrative features On China have,that is,foreign narrative point of view of Chinese events and English-reader-oriented narrative mode.On one hand,affected by his American cultural stand,identity and ideology,the narrator inevitably narrates Chinese events from a foreign point of view;on the other hand,due to a huge distance and great differences between Chinese and Western cultures,the narrator adopts the English-reader-oriented narrative mode to cater to the ordinary English-language readers‘knowledge background,reading needs and cultural expectations,and reduce the difficulty they might encounter in comprehending Chinese events.Specifically,the English-reader-oriented strategies the narrator use are fuzzification,paraphrasing,and comparison.By close reading of On China and its Chinese translation, it is found that the main translation method adopted by the translators is literal translati on. Literal translation preserves the foreign narrative point of view of Chinese events, faithfully transfers the narrator‘s source-culture(English culture) view of the target culture(Chinese culture), and offers Chinese readers an external angle to re-inspect and re-discover Chinese culture through the eyes and interpretations of an outsider. But upon a comparative reading of On China against its translation, three main translation deficiencies are discovered, namely fuzzy reference, information redundan cy and translation of classic quotations in modern vernacular Chinese. The reason for these deficiencies is that no adequate consideration is taken into Chinese readers‘ reading needs and expectations and no adequate transition from English-reader-oriented angle to Chinese-reader-oriented is made. Therefore, from the perspective of target readers, three strategies for revision are proposed, that is, specification of fuzzy discourse, condensation and deletion of redundant discourse, and quasi-original text restoration to cater to the special needs and expectations of Chinese readers.In fact, the narrative features of On China also exist in other English Narrative Discourse of Chinese Events, which is of great significance for studying how China or the image of China is constructed and presented in English cultural context. Besides, the deficiencies identified in On China are also found in the translation of similar discourses, therefore the revision strategies put forward in this thesis can be generally applied to improve the translations.