Narrative Representation And Re-framing:A Comparative Case Study On Narrative Framing Of The Rape Of Nanking And Its Chinese Translation

Published in 1997,The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II was a literary work written by Iris Chang,a Chinese American writer.It was on the bestseller list of New York Times for consecutive weeks,exerting huge influence overseas.Through conducting field interviews with survivors and referring to lots of historic archives,dairies and letters,the author narrates this historical event called the Nanking Massacre from the very beginning till the end in certain temporal orders and multiple perspectives and analyzes underlying reasons and potential consequences.Abundant materials,diagrams,notes and indexes provided by the author are served to assist the narration as a whole.The author not only represents the holocaust as a true historic event,but also digs out other relevant information that is reliable and significant.Owing to this book’s literary value and great realistic significance,this book attracts widespread attention right after its publication.Nevertheless,the academic circle in China seems to have paid inadequate attention to such a documentary writing,which leads to an unbalanced relations between its academic position and research status.This book has unique narrative features that are worthy of in-depth inquiry.Of the translations of this book in 15 languages,Chinese versions are mainly from the Chinese mainland and Taiwan,among which Yang Xiaming’s translation published in 2007 is widely recognized as a remarkable one.Therefore,this thesis chooses to examine the Chinese version by Yang Xiaming in 2007.Upon close reading,it is found that the translation is to some extent different from the original at the narrative level.By means of Genette’s narratology and Baker’s framing strategies,as a result,this thesis applies both quantitative and qualitative methods to analyzing the texts and para-texts,comparing the original and the translation in terms of narrative framing to mainly find out the specific changes.Moreover,some underlying reasons can be disclosed as well.This thesis has found that documentary writing is narrative-oriented in its own right,thus it seems feasible and applicable to conduct relevant translation studies from narrative perspective.Besides,this thesis reveals that the narrative framing of thetranslation is not totally the same with that of the original.On the one hand,the translation basically represents the original textual elements with certain narratives partly omitted.In terms of narrative time,the translation fundamentally follows the order and duration of the original.When it comes to narrative focalization,the translation narrates by means of multiple perspectives.When narrating,the translator follows the original of using internal focalization and external focalization in a compound and flexible way based on zero focalization.By narrative discourse,the translation displays multidimensional narrative discourse of speech presentation and writing presentation.On the other hand,great adjustments are made at para-textual level that assist the whole narration in effect and influence textual narration to some degree.Firstly,the translation applies the strategy of temporal and spatial framing,adjusting cover design,illustrations and notes.Secondly,the translation employs the strategy of selective appropriation,newly adding publisher’s foreword,Chinese preface,translator’s footnotes and postscript.At the same time,specific omissions also appear within this domain.In general,several reasons are available to explain certain patterns of the translation.Considering the author and text type,the translation generally represents the original narratives in content and form for objectivity.Meanwhile,such agents as the translator,the publisher and the editor in the process of translation give their subjectivity and cooperation into full play.With readers,ideology and context taken into account,some para-textual narrative elements are rearranged and re-framed for a stronger sense of involvement in the course of reading.Although changes in narrative framing may influence the flow of narration,the process of narrating becomes clearer and,because background information can be provided in time,readers can thus be given an opportunity to fully understand and easily receive what is narrated.Overall,as a social practice,translation is not only an “equivalence” faithfully representing the original,but also a condensed product based on taking all aspects into account.