A Study On The Chinese Translations Of To The Lighthouse From The Perspective Of Narratology

Woolf is one of the most outstanding stream of consciousness novelists in world literature,whose masterwork To the Lighthouse,has been translated into many languages,due to its innovative language and unique narrative skills,which mainly manifests in the constant shifts of focalization and the adoption of the character's inner monologues or free associations.Narratological analysis of fiction translation helps to identify and avoid the deceptive equivalence.This thesis analyzes the Chinese translations of To the Lighthouse from the perspective of narratology.Examples selected in Qu Shijing's and Ma Ainong's translations are used to explore whether the original narrative skills are reproduced in the translated text from the aspects of narrative focalization and speech representation by the adoption of comparative analysis of the source text and the target text.The thesis finds that both of the translators have represented the narratology as a whole.They represented almost all the external focalization,direct speech,and indirect speech.However,there are some differences in the translation of internal focalization,free direct speech and free indirect speech,and different translations have different influence on the narrative effect.Therefore,conclusions are made that attention should be paid to the features and functions of internal focalization,free direct speech and free indirect speech.First,as for the focalization,the target text should maintain the markers that suggest the speculative status,and leave the marker of uncertainty and mystery to be inferred by the readers from the external behaviors,to represent internal focalization.Second,the speech representation mainly depends on the specific context.The third personal pronoun and the past tense are important markers to distinguish different speeches,and it should be represented in the target text.Apart from this,it should also represent the subtle difference between the character's speech and the narrator's speech,and the impersonal narratology,especially the indefinite pronoun “one”.Importance should also be attached the exclamatory sentences,interrogative sentences and incomplete sentences,for it shows the character's mental activity,which is of great importance in stream of consciousness fictions.