On Reconstructing Narrative In The English Versions Of Slave Mother

Slave Mother is based on a custom of "pawning wife" in the rural area of eastern Zhengjiang Province.The husband’s illness and addiction to gambling made the family hard to survive.He decided to lease his wife to a hsiu-ts’ai family for three years,during which his wife had to give birth to a son for them.As a victim to this vice custom,the wife endured unimaginable sufferings.She thought that her sacrifice would make the condition of the family better,but the reality let her down.Through Slave Mother,Rou Shi intended to disclose and assail the great sufferings that these feudal customs brought to women.While reading the two English versions of Slave Mother by Edgar Snow and Zhang Peiji,the author of this thesis found that Snow and Zhang constructed different narratives in their translation.Thus,this thesis employs a comparative study between two English versions of Slave Mother translated by Edgar Snow and Zhang Peiji based on narrative theory that Mona Baker has applied to translation studies and the study will be approached from the perspective of temporal and spatial framing,selective appropriation,framing by labeling and repositioning of participants,attempting to find out how Snow and Zhang reconstructed the narrative and conveyed the theme of the source text.This thesis tries to answer the following questions:1.What are the differences between Snow’s translation and Zhang’s translation?2.How did translators reconstruct the narrative?3.What is the effect of their narrative strategy?4.Why did Snow and Zhang adopted different strategies?Also,Fisher’s narrative paradigm will be used the assess the narrative in the two translations.Based on this study,it is found that Snow’s translation,on the whole,reproduced the narrative in the source text,but Zhang’s translation failed in this respect.Also,Snow tried to convey the theme of the source text,including Rou Shi’s condemnation of miserable condition of women in the society and unethical custom of pawning wife at that time,but Zhang understated this aspect in his translation.