A Study On The Rebuilding Of National Political Image In Novels From Chinese Literature(1951-1966)

Chinese Literature(English version)was born in a special period of time when the new China was just established.As the first official external publication issued on the mainland of China,Chinese Literature shouldered the important responsibility to enhance cultural communication with foreign countries and to build a good national image.At the present,there are some scholars who have given their concerns to Chinese Literature,but it still needs to be studied intensively and extensively.The question of political image construction in Chinese Literature remains to be explored and being clear about the building of political image in this periodical is of great importance to deepen our understanding of the translation of Chinese Literature and to dig more about the political cultural factors behind translation phenomena.This thesis chooses novels in Chinese Literature(1951-1966)to study this question with methods of text analysis assisted by corpus tools.Political image presented in the source texts are summarized after extensive reading of the 281 Chinese novels and changes in the process of political image rebuilding are examined by comparisons between Chinese and English texts.The author finds that there are five aspects of political image shown in the source texts of Chinese Literature(1951-1966)novels: upholding the leadership of the Communist Party;downing the Kuomintang reactionaries;opposing feudalism,eliminating warlords and clearing bandits;brave resistance against enemies;and high spirits for socialism.Changes presented in the rebuilding of political image are: highlighting the strength of the state leader;avoiding spreading negative descriptions of the Communist Party in source texts;and enhancing the revolutionary spirit of soldiers.In the end of the thesis,reason analysis of why there are changes in the process of political image rebuilding is given with combination with political cultural background of “the Seventeen Years”.Firstly,the overlapping identity of the sponsor and the state leader is the main reason why the strength of state leader is highlighted in the target texts.Then,the special time background of the birthday of Chinese Literature endowed it with the necessity of building positive political image so as to consolidate new-born political power and to win a favorable internationalenvironment for country development.Finally,the correctness of political attitude of translators ensured their choices to make political image positive.