A study of Zhou Shoujuan's translation of western fiction

Abstract

The dissertation is a diachronic study of Zhou Shoujuan's translation between 1911 and 1947 of Western fiction. Zhou was an influential and prolific translator in China during this period. However, labelled one of the hardcore members of a notorious literary school—namely, the "mandarin duck and butterfly school" (henceforward abbreviated as the Butterfly school)—he was for a long time marginalized in the history of modern Chinese translated literature, a situation which changed little even with the amazing comeback of Butterfly literature and the rehabilitation of Butterfly writers in the historiography of modern Chinese literature in the mainland since the end of the 1980s. But my study shows that Zhou actually contributed a great deal to modern Chinese translated literature not only in the number of works of Western writers he translated, but also in the brand new narrative techniques of Western fiction he introduced into China since the early 1910s. In this dissertation, Zhou's translations of Western fiction from 1911 to 1947 are peroidized into two phases: viz., early phase (1911-1919) and later phase (1920-1947). A narratological model is established and applied to the study of Zhou's translations of Western fiction during these two phases. Namely, Zhou's translations are analyzed from the perspectives of focalization/point of view, narratorial commentary and means of characterization. The analytical results show that there is actually a big difference between these two phases in terms of the narrative features mentioned above. The dissertation then explores the in causes of these textual differences on the translator's level and the socio-cultural level and also discusses the change of translation norms underlying these differences.