Narratology And The Translation Of Documentary Literature

Compared with fiction,the narrative forms of documentary writing have fewer constraints.Through alternating various writing styles and changing the narrative voice,the author of Berlin at War enhances readers' feeling of participation in the plot and promotes the narrative's objectivity.Meanwhile,he uses culture-loaded words to convey values and conduct communication.From the perspective of narratology,this paper explores how to overcome the difficulties encountered in translating Berlin at War into Chinese in the three aspects of narrative discourse,narrative voice,and narrative communication.1)A translator should not translate the source text in an invariable way and ignore its figures of speech.Rather,he or she should grasp the author's intention behind the choice of the narrative structures.It is through this process that the translator retains the source text's narrative style.2)When dealing with changing discourse voices,the translator should retain the distinction of different perspectives,for example,the distinction between the internal and external perspective so as not to affect the narrative's persuasive power or the rich narrative effects of the source text.3)The translator shall pay attention to the cultural background of the narrative receiver and remove the communication barriers through paraphrasing or adding annotations.Through analysis of the examples,this paper illustrates that narratology can play an important role in improving the quality of documentary literature translation.