Translation Studies Of Yu Hua's The Seventh Day From The Perspective Of Narrative Stylistics

The Seventh Day published in 2013 is the latest fiction of Yu Hua.The fiction follows the perspective of Yang Fei,narrating what “I” had seen and heard in seven days after death.The English version of The Seventh Day is translated by Sinologist Allan Hepburn Barr.Once it made its debut,it sparked a heated discussion on foreign websites and obtained plenty of positive comments as well.The unique “death narration” and the use of foreground language provide the readers with an approach to shuttle back and forth in Yin and Yang,experiencing real life in absurdity.Narrative stylistics is a kind of stylistic study of analyzing texts with narratology as its framework.It can help the scholars achieve a better understanding of a story from the level of “narration” and “style”.The protagonist of The Seventh Day,Yang Fei,appears as a “dead man” from the beginning of the fiction.A lot of studies about its “death narration” have been conducted in the domestic academic circle.The emphasis of this thesis is to study whether the narrative features and artistic forms of the original text have been distorted or lost due to the stylistic changes of the translation version on the micro level.After conducting the comparative analysis of the original text of The Seventh Day and its translation version from the perspective of narrative stylistics,it can be observed that the translation version of The Seventh Day has varied in narrative time,narrative perspective and narrative distance on account of changes of stylistic features caused by the application of translation techniques and methods.These variations result in deviations in narrative effects.Therefore,in pursuit of the faithfulness and expressiveness of the translation version,more attention to the original texts' narrative and stylistic features should be paid by the translators while translating.On the one hand,this study can enhance the scholars' comprehension about literary translation on the level of style and narration;On the other hand,this study can furnish the beneficial thinking to improve the overseas image of Chinese literature.Above all,this study has profound significance not only in theory but also in practice.