Translating Narrative Space in Children’s FictionBronze and SunflowerFrom Chinese to English

Abstract

Translating narrative space is a necessity due to its fundamental role in children’s literature. To date, studies have shown that efforts to examine the strategy in rendering the space issues in children’s literature translation remain scarce. Responding to that, the paper aims to explore how narrative space is transferred from one language to another. The theoretical framework is based on Ryan et al.’s model of narrative space and Baker’s framing strategies. A qualitative approach is designed to study the renowned Chinese children’s literature Bronze and Sunflower and its English version. A total of 146 examples are purposively selected as the samples. The findings show that selective appropriation is the most frequently used framing strategy. Also, it is observed that the translator prefers to omit some repeated settings and descriptions of spatial frames even though the source text elaborates them, consequently softening the sense of space in the target context. The findings may provide new insights into a better understanding of spatial issues in the translation of children’s literature.

Application of Discriminative Training Algorithm Based on the Improved Gaussian Mixture Model in English Translation Evaluation

“…Zhao et al aimed to explore how narrative space can be transferred from one language to another. Studies have shown that selective appropriation is the most commonly used framing strategy [3]. Si and Wang aimed to apply grammatical metaphors from systematic functional linguistics to translation studies.…”

Storytelling for a republic of childhood: rebranding China’s national images in children’s literature

“…Wang's translation of Bronze and Sunflower, winner of the 2017 Marsh Award for Children's Literature in Translation, adds legitimacy to this claim. Despite Cao's acknowledgement that Wang's translation contributes enormously to his award (China Publishers Magazine, 2018), a comparison of the source and the target texts unveils a subtle process of ideologically and culturally motivated renegotiation in translation: Wang consequently softens "the sense of [local] space in the target context" (Zhao et al, 2022) and adapts scenes that may chafe western moral values, such as the father bathing and intimately smelling his seven-year old daughter. In the original bathing scene, "When he bathed his daughter and saw her scarless body, he felt an unspeakable surge of emotion" (literal translation of the original from Cao 2015b, p. 38).…”