On Framing Narratives In Bringing Overseas Sinological Works To China

Since the 1980s,with the further advance of China's opening-up,domestic academic studies have gradually expanded overseas.Overseas Chinese studies tend to use different perspectives,methods,which are different from those adopted in Chinese academic traditions,to study various aspects of China.Thus,the research findings of sinological studies are attracting more and more attention from domestic scholars.Soulstealers is such a typical overseas sinological work.After its Chinese version was published in 1999,it became a best-selling academic reading and even attracted non-academic readers.In this regard,it was reprinted respectively in 2012 and 2014.One of the reasons for the high reception of this work is Kuhn's clear and coherent narrative of the sorcery cases.However,few people have paid attention to how Kuhn used a large number of original Chinese historical archives to recount this emergency incident that happened in the prosperous age of Qianlong's reign in the Qing dynasty,and few have explored how the narrative of Soulstealers was represented after it entered ChinaThis case study considers Soulstealers as a kind of translation and representation of related historical documents and Chinese culture.Under the framework of Baker's narrative theory,it compares text and paratexts of the English original version and historical archives,thus trying to analyze how these documents are represented and framed by Kuhn's renarration.Then,the author continues to make a textual and paratextual comparison between the English version and the second reprint of its Chinese translation in 2014,thus trying to explore how the original version of Soulstealers was framed and represented in the context of Chinese,and to further investigate the differences in these framing strategies as well as those driving forces behind these differences.As the main renarrators of soulstealing cases and Soulstealers,the author and the translators try to represent most of the content of the text as accurately as possible,but their emotional tones inside and outside the text still present some subtle differences.While renarrating sorcery cases recorded in historical archives,Kuhn has used some adjectives with additional effect to carry out factual description,and some nouns with emotional tendency to renarrate.While the translators tend to dilute the emotional aspects of Soulstealers' narrative.Moreover,the Chinese translation is carried out by two translators,and the emotional tones reflected within the text are not as consistent as that of the author.The differences and even ideological conflicts in the representation and framing strategies adopted by different renarrators are also highlighted in the paratexts,including cover image,blurb,notes and illustrations.By making textual and paratextual comparison,this study has discovered that Soulstealers' original version and Chinese translation are two kinds of selective representation.The difference is that the English original narrative involves the interpretation of sorcery cases,which is colored by some Western stereotypes on China,while Chinese renarrators tend to re-position Kuhn as an objective and neutral narrator,which is influenced by different positions and agenda of renarration.Further,this study,for the first time,applies narrative theory to the analysis of overseas sinological work,which broadens the application scope of narrative theory.Also,findings in these aspects provide new possibilities for translation studies of overseas sinology.