A Narratological Approach To The English Translation Of Jinling Shi San Chai

Jinling Shi San Chai,one of Yan Geling’s representative works,was originally a novella.Then,Yan Geling revised and extended the novella into a novel in 2011.In the same year,the film with the same name adapted by Zhang Yimou was well received after its release,so the novel created by Yan Geling also received wide attention and high praise.Its English version,The Flowers of War,was translated by the famous British translator Nicky Harman and published in 2012.Jinling Shi San Chai has been highly commended for its unique narrative skills.Thus,a good many scholars have begun to pay attention to its narrative characteristics but no scholars have yet studied its English translation from the perspective of narratology.Since its birth in France in the 1960 s,narratology has developed through two stages: classical narratology and post-classical narratology.Classical narratology focuses on the analysis of the inner structure of the narrative work and the relationship between the elements that constitute the work,while post-classical narratology focuses on the relationship between the narrative work and social,historical and cultural contexts.The narrative feature of fiction distinguishes it from other types of literature,so narrative theory helps researchers better analyze and explain the text.From the perspective of narratology,this thesis carries out research on the English translation of Jinling Shi San Chai with the methods of descriptive research,comparative analysis and qualitative analysis.The author makes a comparative analysis of typical examples between Jinling Shi San Chai and its translated version,The Flowers of War,from four aspects of narratology,namely the narrator,narrative point of view,narrative time and characterization to examine whether the narrative characteristics in Jinling Shi San Chai are reproduced by Nicky Harman,what changes Harman makes in a bid to transmit the thematic meaning and aesthetic value of the source text and the resulting changes in narrative effects.The research results show that Nicky Harman’s translated version successfully reproduces the narrative characteristics of the source text to a large extent.However,in the face of the differences between Chinese and English and different narrative traditions of Chinese and Western fiction,Harman makes some adjustments to the source text,which not only helps to convey the thematic meaning of the original work but also makes the translation fluent and natural.Therefore,the translated version is more in line with the reading habits of the target readers,which has a positive influence on the reception of the translated version abroad.This study provides a new perspective for the research on the English translation of Jinling Shi San Chai and enriches the studies on fiction translation from the perspective of narratology.Moreover,this study is conducive to exploring the guiding role of narratology in the translation of modern and contemporary Chinese fiction,so as to provide some enlightenment for the translation of modern and contemporary Chinese literary works.