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Abstract Studies on the translation of evaluative adverbs have been scarce and the few existing ones are not focused on the relationship between the use of them and narrative discourse. The present study explores the impact of the translation of evaluative adverbs on narrative mood, which in¬cludes narrative perspective and narrative distance, by focusing on the English translation Little Reunions of Eileen Chang’s novel Xiao Tuanyuan with the help of a parallel corpus. It is found that 1) the evaluative adverbs used in the source text not only mark out the fixed internal focalization, but also constitute the free direct/ indirect mode of thought presentation that produces a short narrative distance; and 2) a considerable number of the evaluative adverbs are deleted or given a logical subject in the translation, which results in the change of the narrative perspective to that of a selective omnipresence as well as the ambiguity of the overall narrative distance. It is argued that the change of the narrative mood is related to the translators’ translation principle, the genre framing of the translation in the target culture and the need to promote the readability of the translated text.
Key words: narrative perspective; narrative distance; evaluative adverbs; Little Reunions; paral¬lel corpus
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