A Study On The Images Of China Constructed In The English Versions Of Fu Sheng Liu Ji From The Perspective Of Imagology

In Fu Sheng Liu Ji,Shen Fu described his life and the Chinese society with many details.Thus the book fully presents the Chinese society and culture.Moreover,its translations were produced by a variety of translators,including domestic translators,foreign translators and co-translators.Therefore,the translation of the book has high research value.The thesis marries imagology with translation studies to conduct a research on the image of China constructed in the translations of Fu Sheng Liu Ji to find out what different images were built in each one,and then to discuss the reasons behind as well as their influence.Thus,the thesis puts forward an analytical framework according to the definition of image in imagology and the three elements of image proposed by Pageaux.The thesis analyzes the narrative,culturally specific items,characterization,depiction of landscape and paratext from three levels,namely lexicon,hierarchical relation and plot,to conclude the images of China constructed in the four English versions.After that,the thesis conducts an extra-textual study by analyzing social collective imagination and the information about the translators to find out the reasons and influence of these images.Through textual analysis,the thesis finds that Lin portrayed a poetic and idealized idyll where people led a humble but artistic life,showing the good side of Chinese personalities and philosophy of life.Black's version reorganized the structure of the original and made it look more like a romantic novel,depicting China as a mysterious Oriental other.Pratt and Chiang showed a more authentic feudal Chinese society by putting Shen and his misfortune in the social context and thus showing the problems of the feudal society.Sanders made full use of paratext and his literary language to present a poetic country with splendid literature.After extra-textual analysis,it can be concluded that the image of China shown in Lin's version successfully changed Western collective imagination of China to some extent;Black's purpose may be to meet readers' expectations and attract readers by exotic description related to sex and she reinforced Oriental imagination of China;with China's reform and opening up,the world needed more faithful translations to know more about China.Pratt and Chiang's fidelity translation came into being and helped the world know China;Sanders,as a scholar in classical Chinese literature,added expanded information about classical Chinese literature to make the book more accessible and to show the charm of Chinese literature.The study deepens the exploration of the theoretical framework of imagological translation studies and provides a new perspective for the study of the translation of the book and classical Chinese literature.