Narrative Reframing Of Women Images From The Perspective Of Mona Baker’s Socio-narrative Theory

The Chinese Maze Murders is a detective novel about Chinese stories written in English.This acclaimed book has as many as eight Chinese translation versions as of 2021.Although translated from the same text,these translations give readers different women images.To explore this phenomenon,this paper uses Mona Baker’s socio-narrative theory to study the reframing of women images.Given that the main difference among the translations lies in the public narratives,this study adopts this perspective to raise research questions:Do dominant public narratives influence translators’ strategies of reframing women images?If dominant public narratives influence translators’ strategies of reframing women images,how do they influence?This study uses the methods of case analysis to compare the differences among the plots describing female characters.The study suggests that the dominant public narrative when the translation was produced does influence the narrative reframing of the women images,and its influence mainly lies in the reframing of women images and the description of the female body.To clarify,first,the images of the women characters depicted in the three translation versions mirror the general women images in the translators’ society rather than in the original book.Version 1 deliberately imitated the Ming and Qing novels,so it caters to the dominant public narrative "men are superior to women" and weakens the role of women,resulting in the blurred image of women in the translation.Version 2 published after the reform and opening up follows the dominant public narrative of "women can hold half of the sky".The women images were reframed to conform to the mainstream aesthetics,and the female roles lack personal characteristics.The concept of "gender equality" prevails in the 21st century,so women images are vivid and impressed readers in the last version.Second,the ways how translators deal with language concerning the female body indicate how open the society is when the translation is conducted.To illustrate,the street literature of the Ming and Qing dynasties used elements such as the female body to attract readers,so version 1 retained the description of the naked female body.When version 2 was published,the society held a conservative view of the female body and the translator deleted all the descriptions of the naked female body.The last version was published in today’s open society,and hence faithfully translated the naked body described in the original text.The research results of this paper can help comprehensively understand the phenomenon of narrative reframing of women images in the three Chinese translations of The Chinese Maze Murders.At the same time,it also expands the application scope of Mona Baker’s socio-narrative theory.