Narrative reconstruction of events in novel translation: A case study of the English translation of Xuemo's works

Narratology focuses on the formal features of narrative, providing an analytical framework for literary translation. Building on Chatman’s (1978) concept of the “implied author” in narratology, scholars have adopted the term “implied translator” to represent the translator’s narrative intervention (Venuti 1995; Hermans 1996; Schiavi 1996; O’Sullivan 2003). Subsequently, novel translation studies from a narratological perspective have explored various dimensions like narrative perspectives (Bosseaux 2007; Shao 2013; Han and Feng 2021), the characterization of language and thought (Xu and Sun 2018; Wang and Zhang 2021), narrative space (Zhao et al. 2022), narrative time (Zheng 2012; Cleary 2014), emotional handling in narrative (Chen 2022), and the translator’s interpretative narrative intervention (Chen and Dai 2022; Cao and Qian 2022), covering elements such as characters, settings, emotions, space, and perspectives within narratology. Narration is a collective entity comprising characters, settings, events, space, and perspectives, with events being the core element of narration. However, existing studies in novel translation from a narratological perspective have relatively overlooked the analysis of event reconstruction in novel translation. Therefore, this study analyzes event reconstruction in the English translation of two Chinese novels, with the aim of providing a case study for event reconstruction in novel translation and offering a reference for the reconstruction of narrative events in the translation of literature.

This literature review explores existing research in novel translation studies from a narratological perspective and illustrates the necessity of examining event reconstruction in novel translation. It also reviews comparative studies on narrative structures in Chinese and English to contextualize changes observed in the data. Translation studies from the narratological perspective: Building on Chatman’s (1978) notion of the “implied author,” scholars introduced the “implied translator” to analyze translators’ narrative interventions across perspective, characterization of language and thought, narrative space and time, and interpretative intervention (Venuti 1995; Hermans 1996; Schiavi 1996; O’Sullivan 2003). Research has examined narrative point of view and deictic shifts (Bosseaux 2007; Al Herz 2016; Abualadas 2019), the rendering of characters’ thoughts and speech features (Boase-Beier 2014; Kulikova 2020), and narrative space/time manipulation (Zhao et al. 2022; Cleary 2014). Chen and Dai (2022) argue translators’ deliberate interpretive interventions shape narrative presentation. Despite these advances, the translator’s role as reorganizer of events (addition, omission, reordering) remains under-examined. Comparing source and target texts for additions, deletions, and resequencing can reveal translators’ broader narrative mediation and inform practice. Comparative studies of narrative structures in English and Chinese: English paragraphs typically center on one main idea with a topic sentence, while Chinese paragraphing can be more flexible and may contain multiple central ideas (An 1993). In temporality, English organization often follows logical connectors, whereas Chinese often mirrors the temporal order of events (Tai 1993), evident in serial verb constructions and action–result patterns. These differences in narrative structure and reader habits, though not derived from translation comparisons, provide groundwork for understanding narrative reconstruction in translation. The present research follows this path to observe overall narrative changes in English translations of contemporary Chinese novels.

The study adopts a classical narratology framework focused on events, drawing on Genette (1983) for temporal arrangement (chronology, duration, frequency) and Prince (2012) for event combination, completeness, and relevance. Narration involves story time versus narrative time, enabling chronological, reverse-chronological, or non-chronological sequencing. Completeness concerns how intermediate events ensure coherence; relevance concerns how clusters of events share characters/settings/themes. Data comprise two works by the Chinese writer Xuemo and their English translations: Selected Stories by Xuemo (trans. Nicky Harman) and Into the Desert (trans. Howard Goldblatt and Sylvia Li-chun Lin). Xuemo’s works depict rural western China, presenting linguistic and cultural distance from Anglophone readers and thus making event reconstruction observable. The translators are renowned, ensuring translation quality and alignment with prevalent CN-EN translation norms. Research question: What event reconstruction has been made to construct the target text? Sub-questions: (Q1) What adaptations improve narrative completeness? (Q2) What changes occur in temporal arrangement (chronology, duration, frequency)? (Q3) What changes occur in event relevance? Analytical procedure follows Toury’s Descriptive Translation Studies (1995): (1) Identify target-culture translations; (2) Conduct ST–TT comparative analysis; (3) Generalize patterns and norms. Operationally, clauses were used as matching segments, as events are realized by processes at the clause level (Halliday & Matthiessen 2013). When one-to-one clause matching failed due to splitting/merging, events were tracked across clauses to detect additions or reordering. Two linguist researchers independently matched clauses to extract additions, reordering, and deletions, cross-checking for omissions/errors. They then independently mapped shifts to narrative completeness, temporal arrangement, and event relevance, excluding unrelated shifts. Discrepancies were resolved through discussion. Finally, explanations for reconstruction were analyzed from linguistic and cultural perspectives.

- Three categories of event reconstruction were identified: 1) Event addition to enhance completeness: - Detailed conflict events: e.g., added sequence of White Dog’s reactions in “Beauty” (Example 1) to contextualize villagers’ response to Yue’s syphilis; expansion of the camel’s internal monologue and motivations (Example 2); insertion of a clue to Baifu’s darkening intent (Example 3). - Background explanation events: e.g., augmentation of dhole behavior via auditory imagery (Example 4); added practical background on desert travel and camel care to explain protagonists’ decisions (Example 5). In Into the Desert, background episodes drawn from Desert Rites were inserted across chapters to fill knowledge gaps (Table 1 lists per-chapter additions such as courtship, illness, surgery, dreams, divorce plans, births, and key relationship developments). - Narrative opening events: e.g., prefatory introduction of dholes before the first encounter (Example 6); added wedding context before Meng Zi’s shock (Example 7); translators’ prefatory framing of Lan Lan’s daughter’s death to set up coherence (Example 8). 2) Resetting event sequence (temporal arrangement): - Prioritization of emotional events to suit direct rhetorical preferences in English: e.g., sequence a–c–b replacing a–b–c in “Beauty” to foreground Yue’s emotional effort (Example 9). - Restoration of original chronological order where the ST used reverse chronology that could hinder comprehension: e.g., reordering from a–b–c to c–a–b around Yue’s preparations and departure (Example 10); grouping earlier-occurring preparatory events before plans and opposition (Example 11). 3) Hierarchical reorganization of related events (relevance): - By characters: splitting mixed paragraphs into character-focused units to clarify speakers and inner states (Examples 12–13). - By themes: grouping events into single-paragraph units per thematic point (e.g., recovery vs. lingering threat, Example 14), or merging two thematically aligned sections into one paragraph in line with “one paragraph, one idea” (Example 15). At a higher level, chapters were reorganized to emphasize thematic continuity (Table 2 outlines chapter-level restructuring in Into the Desert). - Overall, additions bridge cultural and cognitive gaps for target readers; resequencing reduces processing load by aligning with Anglophone rhetorical norms; and hierarchical reorganization increases readability by clarifying character focus and thematic coherence.

The study shows the significance of adding, reordering, and hierarchically reorganizing events in novel translation. Additions (detailed conflicts, background explanations, narrative openings) target the narrative completeness needed for readers outside the source culture, aligning with relevance-theoretic considerations of audience cognition (Gutt 2014). Such additions render implicit cultural knowledge explicit, enabling mental model construction and causal inference (Bower & Morrow 1990). Reordering improves readability: prioritizing emotional events addresses rhetorical and cultural differences (from inductive Chinese patterns to more direct Anglophone styles), while restoring chronological order mitigates comprehension barriers posed by reverse chronology (Zwaan & Rapp 2006). Re-layering related events by themes and characters adapts to Anglophone paragraphing conventions (“one paragraph, one idea”; Warriner 1963), acknowledging textual, cultural, and poetic differences in translation (Bassnett 2007). Formally, this yields clearer paragraph and chapter segmentation that emphasizes thematic continuity and character-centric coherence. These findings extend narratological translation studies beyond perspective, thought representation, and space–time depictions, foregrounding systematic shifts in event organization as a central locus of translator mediation driven by target-reader comprehension needs.

The study demonstrates that translators reconstruct narrative events through three primary strategies: adding events (detailed conflicts, background explanations, narrative openings) to enhance completeness and bridge cultural knowledge gaps; resetting event sequences (foregrounding emotional events and restoring chronological order) to accommodate target rhetorical preferences; and hierarchically reorganizing related events (by themes and characters) to match expectations for clear, single-idea paragraphing. These practices illuminate translators’ narrative interventions at the level of event organization, expanding understanding of how target texts are constructed for accessibility and coherence. Future research should extend analysis beyond two works to a broader range of authors, translators, and language pairs to test generalizability, and incorporate translator interviews to probe decision rationales and norms shaping event reconstruction.

- Manual clause-level comparison across full novels is labor-intensive; corpus tools cannot easily capture additions, deletions, and resequencing at the narrative-event level. - Narrative-level additions, deletions, and positional adjustments are relatively rare, yielding limited examples despite extensive reading. - The corpus is restricted to two works by a single author (Xuemo) and translations by renowned translators (Harman; Goldblatt & Lin), potentially limiting generalizability across genres, cultures, and translator profiles. - Future work should include more diverse texts, translators, and cultural contexts, and use interviews to better explain causal factors behind reconstruction choices.