On The Reframing Of Narratives In The Translated Folksongs Of Shen Congwen’s Works

Shen Congwen who was nominated twice for the Nobel Prize in Literature attracted international attention.A great many works of his have been translated into English.From the perspective of narratology,folksongs in Shen Congwen’s works are narratives in nature.So,the translators should try to reconfigure the narrative features.Mona Baker’s narrative theory sheds light on the analysis of the original narrative features and the exploration of how to configure these features in translation.From the perspective of Mona Baker’s narrative theory,the thesis aims to explore how the translators handled the narrative features of the folksongs in Shen’s works.In addition,the thesis hopes to figure out the factors that possibly influence the translators’ decision on narrative framing.The thesis,which is a qualitative research,draws on such methods as literature analysis,case analysis and comparison.After an in-depth analysis,the thesis pinpoints four narrative features of the folksongs in Shen’s works:(1)the folksongs in Shen’s works are set in western Hunan province in the antediluvian or modern times;(2)the folksongs sung in the two contexts reveal two different narrative stances on gender status;(3)the narrator-reader relationship is weakened in some cases;(4)folksongs in Shen’s works carry poetic features.Besides,the thesis finds that the translators mainly adopted five strategies to realize narrative reframing:(1)the translators either reproduced the context of the folksongs in Shen’s works or constructed a different and general one through temporal and spatial framing;(2)the translators changed or retained the original narrative stance on the gender status in the folksongs through selective appropriation and labeling;(3)the translators narrowed the distance between narrators and readers through repositioning narrative participants in translation;(4)the translators chose to keep the poetic features of the folksongs through genre framing.As well,the purpose and beliefs of translation may possibly influence the translators’ decision on narrative framing.