On The Narrative Focalization And Speech Presentation In Yao Naiqiang's Chinese Translation Of The Scarlet Letter

Nathaniel Hawthorne is regarded as one of the greatest romantic novelists in the 19 th century in the United States.His novel The Scarlet Letter first published in 1850 remains its everlasting status in western literary world not only for its social influence caused by its nontraditional style but also for its unique narrative techniques.Therefore,it has been attracting many western scholars and critics to conduct relative research.But it was not until the 1830 s that the first Chinese translation of The Scarlet Letter appeared.At home,the studies on its translation mostly lie in such fields as linguistics,poetics,functional equivalence and teleology.There are some papers and periodicals that have discussed its narrative features,but few shed light on its Chinese version from the perspective of narratology.Young as narratology may be,it is an influential discipline.Many scholars adopt narratology into the research on literary criticism,especially on novels as is often the case.However,it is unusual to apply narratology to literary translation.Novel,as a member of literary works,is characteristic of narrative features,which mainly reflect in its narrative structure and narrative techniques.The Scarlet Letter presents its superb narrative style with diversified narrative perspectives and rich speech presentations.Therefore,while in translation,in addition to seize the language differences between the source text and the target one,it is necessary for the translator to cast more focus on its original narrative characteristics for the sake of fully embodying the author's command of the language form and the narrative intention.Both of them are highly expected not to be ignored by the translator,or it is likely to bring about a great loss in the literary and artistic value of the original work.Typical examples selected in targeted chapters of Yao Naiqiang's translated text are used to explore whether the original narrative style is reproduced in the translated text from the aspects of narrative perspective and speech presentation by the adoption of comparative analysis of the source text and the target one.Reevaluation is also made in the value of Yao's translation.Through the comparison and analysis,conclusion is obtained that based on narrative perspective and speech presentation,the translator in most cases successfully reproduces the original narrative features except a few improper translations.Therefore,conclusions are made that only by accurately reproducing the original narrative features in translation can the artistic essence and writing feature of the original text be vividly presented.Seeing that few research on translation criticism is conducted from narratological perspective,this paper is likely to offer Chinese readers a chance to better appreciate the cultural connotation and artistic value of the works through narrative focalization and speech presentation in Yao Naiqiang's Chinese translation of The Scarlet Letter.Meanwhile,light is to be shed on the study of the translation criticism of The Scarlet Letter and contribution is to be made to the translation of other foreign literary works.