A Study Of The English Translation Of Shouhuo From The Perspective Of Imagology

The study of Chinese literary works was a Cinderella subject,not taken seriously enough in the past.Over the past decades,however,as China’s comprehensive national strength increases and its economic power grows,the desire of the outside world to understand China has become more intense.Chinese literature has therefore received increasing attention from the rest of the world.Literature is an embodiment of a society.To a certain extent,literary works reflect the reality of a particular period of a society.Translating a work from one language to another,translators could help expand the influence of the original country.The theory of imagology falls into the category of comparative literature and has the function of “speaking for the other,speaking for the self”.In translation activities,translators replace the original author and become the “self”,observing and recreating the original images,that is,the “other”.Imagology in comparative literature is adopted in this thesis to analyze the English translation of Yan Lianke’s Shouhuo.The research object of this study is the English translation of Shouhuo(translated as Lenin’s Kisses)published in 2012 by American sinologist Carlos Rojas.Intrinsic and extrinsic textual analyses are employed to examine the strategies adopted by the translator and his attitude towards the “other” during the reconstruction of images.Intrinsic textual analysis includes three aspects:lexicon,hierarchical relation and plot.It is found that at the level of lexicon,Carlos Rojas uses the strategies of coinage,transliteration plus gloss and application of words from his native culture to shape the images;at the level of hierarchical relation,the translator amplifies the hierarchical relation;and at the level of plot,the translator recreates the images by deletion,substitution and addition.In terms of the extrinsic textual analysis,the translator is affected by the social collective imagination of his country,his own experience,the source of information,and his emotions,imagination and attitude towards a foreign country,which may cause mistranslation.In addition,it is concluded that the translator has an attitude of amity towards China,which is conducive to achieving equal cultural exchanges between the two countries.As part of comparative literature,imagology has an inseparable connection with translation.It is feasible to apply it to translation studies,which is instrumental in the dissemination of Chinese literature,meeting the requirement of Chinese culture “going out” strategy and realizing cultural exchanges between China and the west.