A Study Of Lin Shu's Narrative Reframing In His Translation Of Uncle Tom's Cabin

Mona Baker,a world-renowned professor of translation studies,put forward the narrative theory in the book Translation and Conflict: A Narrative Account and innovatively applied it to the translation studies.Baker holds that narratives can not only represent reality but also construct the reality.In this way,translators are able to adopt various framing strategies to accentuate,suppress or modify narratives in order to reconstruct social reality.However,the narrative theory has been mostly applied to translation studies of political texts and news report,few studies has been conducted in literary works.Against this research backdrop,the present thesis intends to apply Mona Baker's narrative theory to analyze the narrative reframing of Hei Nu Yu Tian Lu,a translated work by the eminent translator Lin Shu in late Qing dynasty.Hei Nu Yu Tian Lu was translated from the novel Uncle Tom's Cabin written by Harriet Beecher Stowe.The narrative reframing of this translation was very successful.Lin Shu's translation and introduction of this novel served as a powerful weapon to save the motherland from peril and arouse the people's crisis consciousness,thus exerting a great impact on the society at that time.This thesis intends to answer the following research questions: 1.How did Lin Shu reframe the narratives in Uncle Tom's Cabin in his translation Hei Nu Yu Tian Lu so as to achieve his purpose? 2.What are possible factors influencing the translator's adoption of these reframing strategies to reconstruct the new narratives? To figure out answers,a qualitative approach was applied.By comparing the Chinese and English versions word for word as well as marking the cases where reframing strategies are employed,the author studied the cases in detail.After a careful comparison and detailed analysis,the author finds that Lin Shu mainly adopted four reframing strategies to reconstruct the narratives in thetranslation.Firstly,the translator adopted temporal and spatial framing to link the tragic experience of black slaves with the bullied Chinese people in the United States to arouse people's sense of crisis.Secondly,he achieved selective appropriation of textual material through omission and addition,thus suppressing the religious narratives and catering to the current narratives of the society.Thirdly,framing by labelling was realized by the title of the novel,the names of the people and religious names to enhance narrative effects.Lastly,the repositioning of participants involved the adding of prefaces,introductions and postscripts in paratext and the shift of register and deixis within the text to reposition the relationship among readers,participants and the translation.It was through above four reframing strategies that Lin Shu reconstructed the narratives and devoted himself to the construction of public narrative of saving the nation from extinction,so as to achieve the goal of constructing social reality.