This text is taken from the first chapter where Mrs.Dalloway gets her deepreminiscences of the past.She recalls many years ago what Peter Walsh,herformer lover,said to her one morning at the manor house where she lived beforeher marriage,and she is amazed that she still remembers his words so clearly.Andit is clear that this excerpt is Mrs.Dalloway’s inner monologue in internalfocalization,for the process of her flow of consciousness through the eyes of Mrs.Dalloway can be explored.Under internal focalization,according to Genet(1983),narrator=character,which means the reader’s perspective is limited by thecharacter’s perspective.Hence,the same as Mrs.
Conclusion
This thesis explores the presentation of narrative focalization,categories ofspeech presentation and unreliable narration in the two English-Chinesetranslations of Mrs.Dalloway by Jiang Xiangming(2019)and Wang Lijun,LinYuezhe,and Zhao Le(2021).A comparative analysis is adopted to explore howdoes the two translations present the original focalization,categories of speechpresentation and unreliable narration,which translation version more effectivelydemonstrates the original narrative techniques,and the resultant effects of themodification of translators on the narrative.
First of all,shifts in narrative focalization are a crucial narrative technique,notably the internal focalization employed in Virginia Woolf’sstream-of-consciousness novel,Mrs.Dalloway，effectively reveals the inner worldsof characters,reflecting their mental states and cognition,significantlycontributing to the formation of the stream-of-consciousness style.And bothtranslations,to some extent,adapt the three narrative elements.Jiang’stranslation,in comparison,more accurately presents the original internalfocalization while the translation by Wang’s team stands out in its rendition ofdirect speech.And this thesis finds out that nuanced differences in thepresentation of narrative focalization can have a profound impact on the narrativeeffect of the translations.Thus,translators had better accurately identified thefocalization of the original text,closely adhere to the narrator’s viewpoint,becautious in adding extraneous information not present in the cognition ofcharacter,then effectively present inherent ambiguity and suspense brought byinternal focalization,and take the sequence of the character’s perception intoconsideration.
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