A Study Of Free Indirect Speech Translation In Fortress Besieged

Narratology and stylistics occupy very important positions in contemporary critical theories of narrative fiction. Being interdisciplinary subjects with great vitality, both narratology and stylistics employ linguistic models to study literature. They pay attention to texts and regard literary works as self-contained artistic works, thus belonging to the two members in the family of formal criticism.Narrative point of view, following the rise of formalism in 20th century, became a live topic. As a narrative technique, it played an important role in narration. The present thesis adopts the theory of points of view to study free indirect speech translation in the framework of stylistics and narratology. Although stylistics and narratology are different in subjects, orientations and purposes, they get somehow overlapped in the area of the point of view. Both can be applied to fiction analysis.Narratology focuses on relation between narrative form and narrative effect in a particular context with structuralism and formalism analysis. In this way, researchers know whether source text is well reproduced in target text and whether the narrative effect is ideal. Narratology can help researchers to examine whether the narrative forms of the source text are well produced in the target text.Stylistics centers on how literary effects are achieved by means of discourse form. By explicating nature, function and validity of literary stylistics as a discipline, literary stylistics can be used in literary translation studies from the aspects of lexical expression and syntax for speech and thought presentation.Combining theories and methodologies of the two disciplines, this thesis makes an attempt to study free indirect speech translation in novel Fortress Besieged and the change of the text feel resulted from the translators'presence, which provides reference for the translation of Chinese free indirect speech into English. This thesis places itself in the two fields, bringing together an analysis of point of view within a translation study on one hand and focusing on the elaboration of a comparative method to analyze the original text and its translation on the other.