Analyzing The Reframing Of The Soong Dynasty In The Translation Published By The Xinhua News Agency From The Perspective Of"selective Appropriation" And"internal Circulation"

The Soong Dynasty,written by the American writer Sterling Seagrave,is a family saga about the Soong clan,which was very influential in the modern history of China.Right after its publication in America in 1985,the novel became one of the bestsellers.In the same year,the Xinhua News Agency took the lead in publishing this novel in Chinese.Compared with other Chinese versions,this one is special in that it was published only for internal circulation and has undergone drastic omission and addition,i.e.selective appropriation,so the image of the original work has been reframed.But,till now,there is no research analyzing the translation phenomena of the 1985 Chinese version,and neither is there any research specifically discussing translation published for internal circulation based on text analysis.Therefore,the 1985 Chinese version is worth studyingThis study has adopted an embedded case study design and included The Soong Dynasty and its translation published by the Xinhua News Agency into the analysis.By drawing insights from Mona Baker's narrative theory and her framing strategies as well as the paratexts theory,this research explored the role that selective appropriation plays in the reframing of The Soong Dynasty.It is worth mentioning that,the scope of Mona Baker's study from the perspective of selective appropriation of textual material is a bit narrow,since the addition and omission of paratextual material can also exert framing or reframing effects.So,in this study,both textual and paratextual shifts in translation are analyzed from the perspective of selective appropriation.As regards the paratexts,the study focused on the function of the design of book covers,Words of Editors,attached commenting articles,and the notes;As to the text,the study classified the addition and omission in translation and analyzed their reframing effects.It is found that,the selective appropriation has reframed The Soong Dynasty in various aspects.Specifically speaking,different from the original with commercial motivations,the translation's paratexts highlight that the translation presents the original text completely and objectively;textually,the translation has rendered the major storyline and figures more salient,made the language easier to understand,done factual and political correction,reconstructed the image of figures,weakened the informative function of narrative,reduced the language literariness and the political sensitiveness,and failed to reproduce Seagrave's sarcasm,criticism and emphasis implied in allusions.Based on the above analysis,this study proves that the Xinhua News Agency has reframed the narrative of The Soong Dynasty from various aspects by way of adopting selective appropriation.Besides,through this case study,it is illustrated that the selective appropriation can be used as an important reframing strategy in the translation for internal circulation.In addition,the selective appropriation of textual material has been adapted for better analysis in this study,which to some extent,advances the application of narrative theory and narrative framing strategies in translation studies.