A Study Of The Chinese Translation Of Theodore Dreiser’s Works In The “Seventeen Years” From The Perspective Of Mona Baker’s Narrative Theory

Theodore Dreiser was a pioneer of the Modern American novel,and one of America’s most distinguished realist in the 20 th century,renowned for revealing the dark side of the capitalist society.In China,the translation of Dreiser’s works began in the 1930 s,running on to nowadays.After being translated,his novels have made a lasting and far-reaching impact on Chinese literature.Accordingly,the study of the Chinese translations of Dreiser’s works is a meaningful project.However,for the Chinese domestic scholars of Dreiser’s works,stress has been put on making comparisons between the different translations of the same original work.The focus of this paper is on one period,namely,a systemic study on the translations of Dreiser’s works in the “Seventeen Years”.Takes Mona Baker’s narrative theory as the basic theoretical framework,this paper adopts the methods of text contrast and close reading,and combines the social,historical and cultural contexts of China during the "Seventeen Years".Firstly,it introduces the meta-narrative,public narrative,conceptual narrative and ontological narrative in China during the “Seventeen Years”.Then it attempts to summarize the meta-narrative,public narrative,conceptual narrative and ontological narrative,and under the influence of the different narrative typologies,the characteristics of Dreiser’s translation during the “Seventeen Years” period are analyzed.Finally,the representative novel Jennie Gerhardt translated by Fu Donghua is selected as a case study,and four narrative construction strategies adopted by the translator in his English translation are explored to further prove the characteristics summarized above.This study,on the one hand,will help readers to have a clear understanding of the construction system of Dreiser’s translation in China during the “Seventeen years”.That is to say,the construction of Dreiser’s translation during the “Seventeen Years” is a set of mediation strategies adopted by the translators to exerting their subjective initiative under the common influence of different narratives.On the other hand,thisstudy will help us to revise the limitation of Mona Baker’s narrative theory only to be used in the study of political texts.This will provide another theoretical perspective to the traditional translation studies.