On Translation Of The First-Person Novel From The Perspective Of Construal Theory

Based on the case study of short stories from A Manual for Cleaning Women,this thesis aims to explore the application of construal theory to improving the translation of first-person novel so as to promote the literary exchange between China and west.This translation project covers three first-person short stories: Dr.H.A.Moynihan,A Love Affair,Carmen,which are from a collection of short stories Manual for Cleaning Women by Lucia Berlin,an American contemporary novelist.The short novels feature colorful characters,indistinguishable narrative perspectives,ungrammatical expressions,and paronomasia.Statistically,there are a few theoretical studies on the translation of first-person narration,but most of the studies focus on the translation of first-person narration in modern times.The translation practice proves that Langacker's Construal is a very useful theory to be applied to the translation of the first-person story on identifying perspectives and solving related translation difficulties.With the guidance of Construal theory proposed by Langacker,the thesis analyzes several translation cases extracted from the project.It classifies and analyzes the sentences and excerpts from the five dimensions of construal in order to identify perspectives,restore character speech and deal with translations problems including ungrammatical expressions,paronomasia and cultural vacancy.Given the theoretical guidance and the linguistic features of first-person texts,the thesis comes up with two translation strategies.The strategies are to achieve the maximal relevance or optimal relevance between the construal dimensions in target language text and those in source language text.With the methods,the original text can be restored to the fullest extent while readability is ensured.It is hoped that this thesis can illustrate the theoretical guidance for the translation of first-person novels and contribute to the academic translation practices to some degree.