The Retainment And Representation Of Male Characters In Two Translations Of Moment In Peking From The Perspective Of Interpersonal Function

Culture is a nation's soul.Without a rich and prosperous culture,the Chinese nation cannot rejuvenate itself.Drawing on and enhancing the confidence in China's fine traditional culture is one of the dominant themes of our time.Moment in Peking by Lin Yutang not only successfully introduces Chinese culture to the western world but also sparks the Chinese people's interest in its own cultural tradition.To facilitate a deep understanding of the novel,it is worthwhile to study the retainment and representation of the male characters in its two most popular Chinese translations of the original English novel as current research has focused on the female characters.This research studies the utterances of the three male characters in Moment in Peking with the interpersonal function as its theoretical tool from a quantitative plus qualitative approach.It analyzes the mood types,modal operators and modality types of the male characters in both the source text and the target texts in the scope of mood system and modality system,thus to determine to what extent the images of the three male characters in translation are consistent with their images in the source text from the perspective of the interpersonal function.The result can be taken as a criterion of translation evaluation.This research finds that the three male characters chosen are good at communicating with others in the source text.Yao Sze'an is authoritative,Kung Lifu a patriot with passion and knowledge and Tseng Sunya more childlike,less susceptible to the outside events and curious about the world.While generally speaking both Zhang's translation and Yu's translation retain the images of the three male characters in the source text,Tseng Sunya becomes more powerful in decision-making in both translations.An observation of the mood system finds that,in Yu Fei's translation,Yao Sze'an exerts more pressure on others,Tseng Sunya more emotional and Kung Lifu less considerate and less cynical.An observation of the modality system finds that,in Zhang Zhenyu's translation,Yao Sze'an is not as authoritative as in the source text and Kung Lifu less stubborn due to his more liberal handling of the modality system.Zhang Zhenyu's translation is generally better than Yu Fei's translation since the utterances of the male characters are kept consistent with those in the source text in mood and modality systems.This research studies the retainment and representation of character images in the target text from the perspective of the realization of the interpersonal function,which is of great significance in the spread of Chinese culture.A translator needs to consider the interpersonal function when translating character utterances in order to achieve a functional equivalence between the target text and the source text.Only in this way is it possible for readers to understand the thoughts that the author wants to deliver,and culture communication to be conducted effectively.