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Narration and Voice

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English Translations of Shuihu Zhuan
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Abstract

In the recent decade, voice has been widely applied in translation studies. Scholars introduce voice from various disciplines such as literary studies, sociology and linguistics and for this reason their focus varies from each other.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Toury takes adequacy vs acceptability cline as initial norm in his framework, but he also contends that the notion of initial norm is designed to “serve first and foremost as an explanatory tool: Even if no clear macro-level tendency can be shown, any micro-level decision can still be accounted for in terms of adequacy vs. acceptability” (Toury, 1995: 57).

  2. 2.

    Directive modality is a type of deontic modality that “connotes the speaker’s degree of requirement of conformity to the proposition expressed by an utterance” (Loos, 2004).

  3. 3.

    Verbal processes are processes of saying. They accommodate four participants: (1) Sayer, (2) Receiver, (3) Verbiage and (4) Target. The verbiage is the content of what is said. When the verbiage is Subject in a clause, the clause is “receptive” (Halliday 2008: 306–307).

  4. 4.

    According to Halliday (2008), a complement is “an element within the residue that has the potential of being subject but is not”. It is typically realized by a nominal group (2008: 122–123). For example, in “I must tell Betty that when I go down at the end of the month”, “that” is the complement. However, because a prepositional phrase has its own internal structure, the category of complement can also extend to include the minor complement within it (ibid.: 124). In the instances discussed here, namely, “Of this no more need (now)be said/told”, “Of this there is no more to be said/told”, and “Of him/them (definite personal pronouns)… no more need be said/told”, “this”, “him” and “them” are the complements of the verbiage that is told or said. When they appear in the theme, they are definitely marked.

  5. 5.

    Circumstantial adjuncts: SFL refers to the type of adjuncts that functions as ‘circumstance’ in the transitivity structure of the clause as circumstantial adjuncts. They are typically realized by adverbial groups or prepositional phrases and they are often optional (Halliday, 2008: 125). Halliday also points out that, when an adjunct appears in the theme, it is usually marked (ibid.: 147).

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Correspondence to Yunhong Wang .

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Wang, Y. (2020). Narration and Voice. In: English Translations of Shuihu Zhuan. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-4518-4_4

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