A Study Of The English Translation And Dissemination Of Wang Anyi’s Chang Hen Ge In Light Of Actor-Network Theory

Wang Anyi is one of the most acclaimed contemporary Chinese women writers.As her masterpiece,Chang Hen Ge won Wang the prestigious Mao Dun Literature Award of China in 2000.In the same year,Michael Berry initiated a translation project to translate Wang Anyi into English and was actively engaged in the later publication and dissemination of the translated work.The English translation,though selling less than its French counterpart,has received many praises,which should be greatly attributed to the concerted efforts of various actors involved in the translation and dissemination of this novel.The present thesis is to trace these actors involved and explore how they work together to build the actor-network of the English translation and dissemination of Chang Hen Ge based on Actor-Network Theory,an agent-and process-oriented sociological theory.Actor-Network Theory(ANT)is a sociological theory put up and developed by Bruno Latour,Michel Callon,and John Law in the late 1970s.It was first put forward to explain the process of innovation and knowledge creation in the field of science and technology.As time went by,it has been used in many other fields,including translation studies.With its key concepts,actor,network,and translationANT,the theory has shown its great strength in revealing actors involved in translation and describing the process of networking in translation activities.Based on Actor-Network Theory,the paper describes and analyses the whole process of the English translation and dissemination of Chang Hen Ge,which can be broken into three translationsANT:1)translationANT one:translating Chang Hen Ge to The Song of Everlasting Sorrow;2)translationANT two:publishing The Song of Everlasting Sorrow;3)translationANT three:advertising The Song of Everlasting Sorrow.To be specific,translationANT one describes how the translator Michael Berry initiates the translation project,interests and enrols various actors,including Wang Anyi,Chang Hen Ge,Susan Chan Egan,Alice Cheang,and so on,and gets these actors who are dispersed in time and space mobilised for a common goal;translationANT two concerns about the publication of this novel,explaining how the English translation finally gets published with the help of Michael Berry,David Der-wei Wang,Columbia University Press and the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation;translationANT three demonstrates the efforts to promote this novel,analysing the factors improving its performance in the English-speaking world.Moreover,the paper gives special attention to one key actor-the translation principles of the two translators,and analyzes these principles with specific examples.These examples,which demonstrate various translation strategies and techniques used by the two translators provide us with a clear picture of their translation principles.The major findings of the paper are as follows:1)the actor-network of the English translation and dissemination of Chang Hen Ge is built by various human and non-human actors in each sub-actor-network,including Wang Anyi,Chang Hen Ge,Michael Berry,Susan Chan Egan,The Song of Everlasting Sorrow,David Der-wei Wang;2)it is through various ’moments’ of translationANT that these actors get interested,enrolled and mobilised in these sub-actor-networks;3)actors in the whole actor-network of the English translation and dissemination of Chang Hen Ge are not separated but closely related,which means they may affect each other.It is hoped that this research has revealed the working mechanism of the English translation and dissemination of Chang Hen Ge and could be constructive for exploration into the process of translation in a general sense.