Representation Of Power Relations In Translation Of Dialogues In Er Ma From The Perspective Of Modality

Dialogues often reflect the social relationship between people.As one of the most important interpersonal relationships,power relations are mainly expressed,established and maintained through dialogues.Therefore,accurately representing power relations in translation of dialogues is significant in translation studies.Based on the theory of modality,this thesis chooses Lao She’s novel Er Ma and its two English versions to conduct a study of the translation of dialogues from the aspects of modal types,modal values and modal orientations.It aims to analyze how translators represent power relations in translation of dialogues,thus providing some reference to translation practices in fictional texts.Through analysis and research,it is found that there are differences between the two English versions in representing power relations in translation of dialogues.Julie Jimmerson’s translation generally prefers to retain the modal forms in the source text to reflect the power status of characters,thus successfully representing power relations between different characters in the target text.However,William Dolby’s translation tends to change some vocabularies and grammatical forms of the original dialogues to reflect the modal meaning so that it results in the deviation of the characters’ power status,which to some extent fails to fully represent power relations in the target text.Therefore,in the light of modality,translators can adopt various translation strategies from the three aspects of modal types,modal values and modal orientations to represent power relations effectively in the translation.This thesis studies the representation of power relations in translation of dialogues from the perspective of modality,which provides a new thinking for the application of modality to translation studies.Besides,through the analysis of specific examples,this thesis can provide some applicable strategies for translators to represent power relations in translation of dialogues,which helps to improve the quality of translation practices in future studies.