| Nathaniel Hawthorne, the excellent romantic American writer, may stand as the symbol of American literature in the 19th century. His masterpiece The Scarlet Letter which was first published in 1850 has attained an immediate and lasting success for its great social influence as well as the impressive narrative techniques and frequent use of symbolism. Over one hundred years after its appearance, The Scarlet Letter and Nathaniel Hawthorne are firmly ensconced in the canon of great American literature, which is proved by the admiring criticism of many famous reviewers and the great popularity enjoyed by American readers.In the western world, The Scarlet Letter has enjoyed such high reputation; however, China was slow in introducing the talent writer Hawthorne and his masterpiece The Scarlet Letter. Although there appeared an old Chinese version before China's liberation in the 1930s, it was not given enough attention. Until 1981, the first authorized Chinese version named Hong Zi came out, published by Shanghai Translation Press. Since the 1990s, translating activities became gradually prosperous, arousing the studies on its Chinese versions. However, according to the data collected from CNKI during the time span from 1990 to 2010, there are altogether 12 articles using"The Scarlet Letter"and"translation"as the key words. What's more, there are no articles with"The Scarlet Letter","narratology"and"translation"as the key words. Such main aspects as the theme and characterization concerning narratology have been given special attention, but the perspective of point of view and speech presentation in narratology frequently used in literary criticism has been rarely taken into studying translation.Eighteen different Chinese versions are available since the first published edition, among which Hu Yunhuan's Hong Zi in 1991 published by The People's Literature Publishing is one of the earliest authorized Chinese versions and Yao Naiqiang's Hong Zi in 2005 published by Beijing Yanshan Publishing House is one of the most popular ones. The author of this thesis attempts to make a case study with the aim of analyzing the reproduction of the narrative style in two Chinese versions to figure out whether they appropriately transfer the narrative features of the original novel.Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter is a remarkable novel bearing such ingenious narrative features as the multiple narrative point of view, the rich speech presentation and etc. Any ignorance of those narrative features in translating will definitely sacrifice the artistic appeal of this novel.Through the comparative analysis of both the source novel and the two target translated versions, the author of this thesis has made a conclusion that both the two versions appropriately transfer the original point of view and speech presentation to a large extent except for some little differences. As a result, they both successfully maintain the original thematic and aesthetic value. Due to the lack of studies on the translation of The Scarlet Letter in the perspective of narratology in China, it is hoped that the thesis will help the Chinese readers to get a better understanding towards its thematic connotation and aesthetic value, and also hoped that it'll shed some light on fictional translation by this experimental study with The Scarlet Letter as the case in the field of narrative point of view and speech presentation. n... |
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