| Gu Hua’s Furong Zhen is a famous contemporary Chinese novel with countryside motifs.It was awarded the first Mao Dun Literature Award.The success of this novel has attracted many readers to pay attention to Chinese literature.Gladys Yang translated it into A Small Town Called Hibiscus and published it in Panda Books of Chinese Literature,which was widely favored and praised by foreign readers.Furong Zhen portrays three typical images of the Chinese females in the 1960 s.Since the founding of New China,the social status of Chinese females has significantly improved,and their sense of autonomy has begun to awaken.In the context of improving China’s soft power and cultural level,it is of great significance to apply imagology to the study of image construction in translation.Therefore,this thesis applies imagology to analyze the English translation of Furong Zhen and explores the construction of the images of early contemporary Chinese females in it.By comparing the original text with the translation,this thesis finds that Gladys Yang used omission,addition,modification and some other translation strategies,and she reconstructed the images of early contemporary Chinese females as confident,independent,and with courageous in pursuit of happiness and equal in status with Chinese males,while they are superstitious,weak and dependent on Chinese males in the original text.Analysis of extrinsic textual factors shows that Gladys Yang was influenced by her emotions and personal attitudes,the western social collective imagination,and publishing institutions.From the perspective of imagology,this thesis examines how and why the images of early contemporary Chinese females in the English translation of Furong Zhen have been reconstructed.It also enriches translation researches related to the reconstruction of the images of Chinese females. |
