The Application Of Image-G Actualization To The Characterization

The Running Man is a science fiction by Stephen King, which published in 1982. The novel depicts a dystopian United States. In the year 2025, the world’s economy is in a shambles, and the world grows more violent. The story’s protagonist, Ben Richards, faces desperate situation to support his family, so he attends a violent game show, The Running Man, which run by government-operated television station. In the show, the contestant will be declared as the enemy of the state and be hunted by a team of professional killers. Richards experiences the deep dark side of the state while being hunted. In the end, he chooses to perish together with Dan Killian, the executive producer of the program.The novel tells the story from the little man’s perspective. The government control and oppress the people by the mind-numbing reality shows and dope. However, there are also love and contention in the absurd and cruel games. The propaganda sacrificed himself to fight against the dog-eat-dog society. The topic of the novel is thought-provoking. The writer chose the first fourteen chapters of The Running Man to do translating. The fourteen chapters are about the reason of Richards’ taking part in the Games and the participants’ selection progress. The part contains lots of dialogues and rhetoric devices. In the fiction, Stephen King creates living characters by vivid language. Characterization is essential to novels. Profound characterization is necessary to a successful novel. Dialogues, environmental description and rhetoric devices are common methods to shape the characters. The translator tries to reproduce the holistic image of the characterization which King wishes to show to the readers through original texts.In the process of literature translation, recreating the source text in Chinese exists certain difficulties. Jiang Qiuxia has proposed image-G actualization theory and she holds that successful literary translation should be based on successful image-G actualization. By introducing image-G as an intermediary schema between original text and translated text, this theory not only solves the problem of mechanic item for item equivalence in translation, but also affirms the subjective role of translators. Jiang thinks that there are two steps in the process of image-G actualization. The first is mental actualization, which is the understanding process before translation; the second step is linguistic actualization, which is process of the target text’s coming into being. By studying the two steps of image-G actualization, the writer wishes to have thorough understanding of The Running Man, build similar aesthetic feeling with King and realize a natural and effective transition which conforming to Chinese expressions.The report discusses the image-G actualization in the translation process and summarize the translation strategy of dialogues and rhetoric devices. Besides, the writer attempts to accomplish an easy-to understand Chinese version for the readers. Finally, the writer wishes to bring the classic work to Chinese readers and lead them to the fabulous imaginary world of Stephen King.