Narrative Framing Of National Images In Macau News

Lin Zexu,the governor of Huguang during Daoguang period,was promoted to the Imperial Commissioner responsible for curbing opium smuggling in Guangzhou in 1838.The Commissioner Lin launched the translation activity called Macau News aiming to explore the situations of foreign countries.Macau News covered a wide range of topics,and most of them were upon opium trade and relevant conflicts.It also mentioned about trade situations,military forces,and anecdotes.As a result,Macau News was regarded as a window for Lin to learn about the outside world and of great significance to study the translation activity and narratives embedded in it.There are numerous researches conducted both home and abroad about Macau News,mostly from the perspective of journalism studies.Only a few researches are from the perspective of translation studies,and about its background,purpose,skills,strategies,and Lin’s translators.They are lack of comparison of source and translated texts because of the unveiling of historical documents.This research regards the Commissioner Lin and his translators as a whole and discusses the narrative framing of images of the United Kingdom and China from the perspective of Mona Baker’s narratives theory.It aims to figure out translators’ strategies,skills,and positions from appropriation of textual material,framing by labelling,repositioning of participants.This research finds that the images of the United Kingdom and China are different from the realities,and translators’ positions are wavering under the two competing narratives.The image of the UK is weakened while that of China is weak yet culturally admirable through framing narratives by the translators.Although Commissioner Lin received a vague,biased image of the other world,it marked the groundbreaking step made by Qing Dynasty to learn and explore the outside world and its own position and gradually get rid of the attitude of Celestial Empire.The research about Macau News not only contributes to the research of Lin Zexu,but sheds light on translation studies during conflict times.