A Study On Framing Narratives In The English Version Of Bronze And Sunflower

Cao Wenxuan is the first native Chinese writer who received the Hans Christian Andersen Award.Through his work,he tells Chinese children’s stories,while the translator retells these stories to many target readers through translation.In the process of translation,the way the translator frames aspects of the narrative(s)encoded in the source text or utterance directly determines target readers’ interpretation of the target text.Narrative in sociology and communication refers to the everyday stories we live by.The narrative theory proposed by the British scholar Mona Baker creatively combines translatology with narratology.She points out that translation is also a kind of narration,as a process of promoting narratives,it not only reflects reality,but also participates in the construction of the social reality of the source language.Basing on Mona Baker’s narrative theory and taking the English version of Bronze and Sunflower translated by Helen Wang as research object,this thesis aims to interpret how the translator frames translation by accentuating,undermining or modifying aspects of the narrative(s)encoded in the source text or utterance,and elaborate what translator’s purposes to mediate in Bronze and Sunflower.This study founds that in the English version of Bronze and Sunflower,the translator’s accentuation of the original narratives is manifested in narrative accrual of disasters and the particularity of narrativity;besides,the weakening of the original narratives is realized by selective appropriation of textual material and framing by labelling and the modifying of that is embodied by the names of the food,the units of measurement,and the temporal and spatial framing.More specifically,through the narrative accrual of disasters,the protagonist of this novel endured lots of suffering,and showed optimism and tenacity,which highlighted their virtues;the particularity lay in resonating recurrent storylines and subverting familiar storyline,both emphasized the attitudes of protagonists to hardships;through the selectiveappropriation of textual material and framing by labelling,the cultural differences and communication conflict caused by address terms were weakened.The study also founds that in order to cater to the target readers’ expectation for religion under the influence of cultural difference,the translator modified the narratives encoded in the original text through temporal and spatial framing;for another,translators’ modifying in the units of measurement and the names of food improved both the readability and acceptability of the English version,and narrowed the distance between target readers and the translated version.