Red Star Over China:Exploring The Communication Of Its Three Chinese Versions And Influential Factors

Red Star over China was written by American journalist Edgar Snow who based the whole book on his own experience of entering into the Shanxi-Gangsu-Ningxia region and his close contact with Red Army and Communist Party of China(CPC)leaders.The release of this book offered readers an important channel to know CPC.For decades,this book survived the test of time,and has always been a classic for readers and researchers.The previous researches on the book mostly focused on its influence on CPC,the examination of the different versions,or the values of the contents.However,few studies shed light on the communication of different Chinese versions.The thesis selects one version drawing most attention among readers and being most frequently mentioned in academia from each of the three boom translation periods of the book as the research subjects.They are the 1938 version translated by twelve translators under the guidance of Hu Yuzhi,the 1949 version published by Qiming Publishing House,and 1979 version translated by Dong Leshan.The thesis mainly explores three questions concerning the communication of the three versions:I)How have the three Chinese versions been communicated respectively?2)What are the differences among their communication effects?3)What are the factors influencing the communication effects of the three versions?Based on the materials collected,the paper describes the communication effects of the three versions from three aspects:1)the circulation amount,publication and reprint times;2)the feedbacks from readers and reviewers;3)the make-Lup of readership.Then the thesis contrasts their communication effects,in pursuit of pointing out the differences lie in the final communication effects of the three versions.Afterwards,by adopting the revised model based on Lasswell’s communication model,the thesis examines the influential factors affecting the communication effects of the three versions.After analysis,the main findings regarding the reception are:1)the 1938 version performed quite well in terms of circulation amount,publication and reprint times,and comments from readers and reviewers,but it only covers patriotic intellectuals as its readership;2)the 1949 version was republished many times and embraced a much broader readership including people from different classes and different walks of life who were interested in the book,but it only received very limited feedbacks and its circulation amount was unknown;3)the 1979 version had good performance in all three examined factors.Through careful contrast,the thesis concludes that in terms of the communication,the 1979 version ranks the first,and the 1938 version and the 1 949 version were roughly the same.And the findings concerning the influential factors of the communication effects are as follows.First,Population,political situation and the policies on the translation under different social backgrounds will be the major factors determining the final communication effects.Second,owing to different ideologies,political stances,translation purposes and etc.,translators would manipulate over the content including what to translate and how to translate,which will exert impact on the communication results.Third,the prestige,resources and experience of publisher can also affect the communication of the book.Last but not least,the final communication effects of these versions also depends upon whether readers’ ideology is in accord with the content of the book and their reading needs are satisfied by the translation.