On The Shifts Of Reporting Modes From The Perspective Of Narrative Stylistics

This is a study of the speech and thought presentaion in Howard Goldblatt’s English translation of Hulanhe Zhuan, conducted from the perspective of narrative stylistics and on the basis of Leech & Short’s(2001) model of speech and thought presentation. It will be focused on the translation shifts of the presenting modes, namely, on cases where the original mode is changed into another one in the TT, with the aim to summarize the translator’s strategies in rendering the modes.In previous translation studies of speech and thought presentation, most researchers take a prescriptive approach, with the claim that, because shifting the modes of speech and thought presentation will produce a different stylistic effect in the target text, the translator should not make such adaptations as he/she likes. But this is unfair for a translator who makes shifts in order to “reproduce it as faithfully as possible and to grasp it in its totality”(Popovic, 1970:79).For an objective analysis of the narrative and stylistic effects of the shifts, this thesis takes a descriptive approach that combines quantitative statistics with qualitative analysis. It will first work on the number of shifts made of each mode of presenting speech and thought, to give an overview of the translation of speech and thought presentation in the target text. Then it will move on to the analysis of each individual cases of shift by relating the mode of speech and thought presentation to the narrative art of the novel in terms of narrative voice, narrative distance, and point of view as well as to the stylistic and thematic value of the novel.The translator’s strategies of dealing with speech and thought presentation might be summarized as follows. First, making shifts in order to preserve the fluency and naturalness of the TT. As a researcher on Xiao Hong, he regards “naturalness” as an important feature of Hulanhe Zhuan. Therefore, in translation, he give priority to the smooth flow of narration rather than the preserving of specific stylistic features, for example, by shifting more free modes into indirect speech and by preserving the effect of a reporting mode rather than the mode itself. Second, making shifts to comply with the literary conventions of the target language. Goldblatt believes that, during the process of translation, shifts should be made in line with linguistic and literary features of the target language so that the translation will not made a challenge to the reader. Therefore, he tends to comply with the literary convention of reporting modes in English, for example, by shifting DS in dialogues into FDS and by shifting the blend to present character speech into IS. Third, preserving more important effects even at the sacrifice of the less important ones. In some cases, free direct speech without quotation marks is used to form a contrast of light and shade and to create an effect of vividness. Because in English it is not frequently seen to present speech with FDS without quotation marks, in order to preserve the contrast in the TT, FDS is often shifted into IS.