Abstract

Anastrophe is a common and important means of reordering sentential constituents for grammatical legitimacy or rhetorical exuberance. The paper aims at exploring proper translation strategies to preserve anastrophe-borne functions via assessing the translated instances of anastrophe in Edgar Allan Poe’s short stories.

A total of 49 tokens of rhetorically motivated anastrophe from Poe’s 5 famous short stories are examined. Detected from the tokens are 5 functions—focus highlighting, structure balancing, cohesive function, topic introducing, and scene setting—each given an inspection of the translators’ treatments followed by an evaluation of the translations and suggestions for better preservation of rhetorical and pragmatic effects.

The findings reveal that in translation most of the non-canonical orderings induced by anastrophe are restored to the normal. The reasons are two-fold: One is to ensure the readability that can otherwise be compromised by Chinese sentences structurally equivalent to the original anastrophe-marked ones; the other is that the same inverted ordering, when faithfully replicated in Chinese, is not necessarily unorthodox any longer, e.g. VS induced by a fronted PP indicating a place, a category or a situation, of which the loyal re-presentation of word sequence often makes a normal Chinese existential or non-subject sentence. Where non-canonic word trajectory is conserved (3 cases), the translation features the fronting of a topic element, which originally is part of an initialized adverbial, so as to be in sync with the source theme-rheme sequence and information distribution. To compensate the rhetorical effects, translators have at their disposal both lexical (e.g. reiteration, adding emphatic adverbs, employing four-word phrases) and syntactic devices (e.g. using Chinese be-sentence, existential sentence, non-subject sentence).

The translation versions discussed and compared in the study exhibit some shared inadequacy in terms of effectively communicating anastrophe-borne rhetorical and pragmatic functions to Chinese language. Most prominent are false location of semantic emphasis, the lack of sensitivity to suspension, and the unduly weakening of cohesive force. To amend, this paper proposes such techniques as preserving the element to be emphasized at the finish, extending the original pre-modifiers or inserted constructions to delay the disclosure of elements scrupulously held in suspension, and employing Chinese “be-sentence” for stronger cohesive tie, etc.

Key words: rhetoric, translation, anastrophe, Edgar Allan Poe, short stories

Contents

Abstract

中文摘要

Chapter 1 Introduction-1

1.1 Research Background-1

1.2 Research Objectives-2

1.3 Thesis Structure-3

Chapter 2 Literature Review-4

2.1 Studies on Anastrophe-4

2.2 Researches on E-C Translation of Anastrophe-6

2.3 Researches on Edgar Allan Poe’s Works-7

Chapter 3 Anastrophe: Definition, Classification and Function-9

3.1 Definition-9

3.1.1 Definition of Anastrophe in Western Rhetoric-9

3.1.2 Definition of “dao zhuang” in Chinese-10

3.2 Classification-11

3.2.1 Classification of Anastrophe in Western Rhetoric-11

3.2.2 Classification of “dao zhuang” in Chinese-13

3.3 Function-15

3.3.1 Function of Anastrophe in Western Rhetoric-15

3.3.2 Function of “dao zhuang” in Chinese-21

3.4. Comparison Between Anastrophe and “dao zhuang”-24

Chapter 4 Analysis of E-C Translation of Anastrophe in Poe’s Short Stories-26

4.1 Translators’ Treatments of Functions of Anastrophe-26

4.1.1 Focus Highlighting Function-26

4.1.2 Structure Balancing Function-31

4.1.3 Cohesive Function-33

4.1.4 Other Functions-37

4.2 Evaluation-38

4.2.1Evaluation of Function-Structure Distribution of Anastrophe-38

4.2.2 Evaluation of Translation Effects-39

Chapter 5 Conclusion-49

5.1 Major Findings of the Study-49

5.2 Limitations of the Study-50

5.3 Suggestions for Translation of Anastrophe-50

References-51

文献综述汇报-55