Abstract
Traditionally, theories of international relations are based on soverignty andstates. As the strides and leaps made in IT technologies largely accelerate theexpansion of Cyber space, today, cyber security has become an increasingly serious,and ever-hot, major international issue overshadowing other conventional areas ofsecurity in recent years. The nature and distinctive features of Cyber space, whichevolves and changes rapidly today, is challenging the focuses and scopes ofinternational relations.
In particular, the recent exposure of the so-called “PRISM Revelation” scandalagain ignites a global explosion of security concerns, suspicions, frictions andconflicts in the Cyber space that were once a local, insalient issue. The fact thatSnowden alone is capable of triggering a global turbulence reveals the astonishinglyenormous challenges posed by cyber imbalance to national or even internationalsecurity. The unfolding debate on state surveillance, Internet censorship and the manyother manifestations of state power exercising sovereignty over the network make thevery idea that making Cyber space a harbor free of states' influence sound unrealistic,or outdated.
Also, Cyber space brings changes to international community. Theinterconnectivity nature of Cyber space makes that one country's cyber securityconcerns not only its national security and people's livelihood, but also the stabilityand prosperity of the world as a whole, which means using Cyber space as abattlefield is in no one's interest. Therefore, Cyber space should not be a place whereevery gain for one country is a loss for the others, and vice-versa. Rather, it should bea place of competitive collaboration, where states challenge each other, but fairly,while seizing the opportunities to collaborate for collective good.
This paper is intended to explore the influence of the development of Cyberspace on international relations in the wake of the Prism Revelation, so as to have abetter understanding of changes and new characteristics of today's internationalrelations. Unlike the past, Cyber space has emerged and become a criticalAbstract.
Lisa Jane Smith is an American female writer of young-adult-themed literature.
The Vampire Diaries is one of her representative works. Since its publication oftrilogy in 1991, the novels have won wide readership across the globe.
This thesis conducts an analysis of The Vampire Diaries from a new perspective,considering it transcends the form of Gothic novel, and explores the inheritance andbreakthrough of Gothic features in The Vampire Diaries, focusing on its theme,characters, then plots development.
On the fiction theme, The Vampire Diaries inherits the Gothic theme of horror,love, and conflicts between good and evil; but further develops the above themesthrough combination of modern elements and fantasy. For the vampire image andcharacterization, The Vampire Diaries still possesses the vampire image and power intraditional Gothic novels, and brings more distinctive vampires' supernatural powerand unique behaviors. Compared with traditional Gothic vampire stories, the plot ofThe Vampire Diaries gets more involved and more twisted scenario.
As the representative work of modern vampire fictions, The Vampire Diaries'inheritance and breakthrough of Gothic fictions in turn brings itself huge success andgreat reputation. And as the sub-genre of Gothic fiction, vampire fictions will belongstanding and get prosperous due to its unique features and cultural backgroundin today's developed society.
ABSTRACT
Thomas Hardy is regarded as both a major novelist and a prominent poet duringthe transitional period of the 19thcentury to the 20thcentury. He is most famous for his“Novels of Characters and Environment”, which gains him worldwide reputation. TheReturn of the Native is a representative one of this series.
The Return of the Native is regarded as Hardy's first tragic novel in which thecharacters' fates are closely related to the natural environment. As a nature-lover,Thomas Hardy frequently expresses his deep concern towards nature in this novel andappeals to construct a harmonious relationship between man and nature. His ecologicalthoughts embodied in The Return of the Native are in accordance with the ideas ofecocriticism. To put it briefly, ecocriticism is a newly-emerged literary criticismconcerning the relationship between man and nature in literary works. The intrinsicvalue of nature and ecological holism are its core concepts. This theory argues for theintrinsic value of nature, regards both man and nature as the indispensable componentsof the whole ecological system, maintaining that both enjoy the same rights and havethe same status. Namely, man and nature are integrated together in one eco-system.
Thus, one cannot separate himself from the natural environment.
This thesis is to employ the theory of ecocriticism to interpret The Return of theNative. Besides the Introduction and Conclusion parts, the main body of this thesisfalls into four chapters. In the first chapter, the thesis sorts out previous studies of thisnovel both at home and abroad. The second chapter gives an overview of the theory ofecocriticism as the theoretical basis of this thesis. The third chapter focuses on thedisharmonious aspects as represented in the novel and brings out the ecologicalthoughts embodied within. In the light of ecological holism, the last chapter mainlydeals with text analysis with emphasis on the detailed depictions of the harmoniousnatural world, wherein man and nature fuse into one.
In The Return of the Native, nature is full of vigor, vitality and mysteries. Itpossesses intrinsic values, independent from human wills. In Hardy's writing, all thenatural things are human-like figures and have important symbolic meanings. EgdonHeath is depicted as possessing a kind of mysterious power, manipulating thecharacter's fate. Besides, the relationship between man and nature as demonstrated inthe novel has its deep historical background. The invasion of industrialization not onlydisharmonizes the man-nature relationship but also distorts the man-man relationship.
The characters in the novel who alienate themselves from nature end up with tragedywhile those who can keep a harmonious relationship with nature finally get a happyending. In a sense, the characters' different lots in life can be seen as a kind ofmetaphorical expression of the relationship between man and nature.
In an age of increasing outbreaks of serious ecological crisis, great importanceshould be attached to the relationship between man and nature. Thus, by interpretingThe Return of the Native from the perspective of ecocriticism, this thesis aims toexplore the ecological consciousness embodied in the novel and hopes to call on aholistic view in dealing with man-and-nature relationship.
ABSTRACT
According to Lefevere, translation is rewriting of the source text. All rewritingsmanifest a certain ideology and poetics which manipulate or influence literary worksto function in a given society in a given way. Translators always change the originaltexts to some extent so as to comply with the mainstream ideology and poetics. Onlyin this way can the translated version pass the official inspection smoothly and beaccepted by most readers.
Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel The Scarlet Letter has long been considered as aclassic both at home and abroad. Published in 1850, the novel tells the story about theprotagonist Hester Prynne, who conceives a daughter through an adulterous affair andtries hard to start a new life of regret and dignity. Due to its important position in thehistory of world literature, it has already been translated into many different kinds offoreign languages. According to the materials available, there are up to 34 differentChinese versions. The present study attempts to make a comparative study of twoChinese versions (Han Shiheng's version in 1954 and Yao Naiqiang's version in 1996)of The Scarlet Letter from the perspective of Manipulation Theory.
Through comparison, this thesis holds that ideology and poetics in differenthistorical times influence translators' philosophy of translation and their translationstrategies. For the same original work to be translated, translators of different timestend to have obvious differences in the selection of lexicon, syntax and even the textstructure. Han's version manifests more about the manipulation of political ideologythan Yao's version. But in Yao's version, the trace of socialist ideology is not thatobvious since this version came out under the spring breeze of reform and opening-uppolicy blowing across the country. Owing to the different periods of time governed bytheir ideology and poetics, Han and Yao tend to translate The Scarlet Letter differentlyin text making. In terms of the average sentence length, Han's version is longer thanYao's, indicating that Han adopts to take the literal translation strategy while Yao isinclined to use free translation strategy. At the structural level, Han deletes the prefacewhile Yao retains it, which can be inferred that the poetics factors, including thechanged status of American literature and scholars' views on the significance of thepreface play an important role in translation.
Besides the Introduction and Conclusion parts, the present thesis is composed ofthree chapters. The first chapter is the literature review concerned with The ScarletLetter and its translation. Chapter Two introduces the theoretical foundation of thestudy – the Manipulation Theory. Chapter Three is the main part of the thesis,analyzing the two Chinese versions of The Scarlet Letter from the perspective ofManipulation Theory, and explaining the different translation strategies adopted bythe translators.
ABSTRACT
With the development of the times, tourism industry is flourishing. There is avariety of guidebooks,whose translation, to a certain degree, influences the growth oflocal tourism. This translation report is based on the Chinese-English translation ofHangzhou Travel Guild (2013)。 The translator has translated a part of the book andthen finished the report in the hope of offering practical guidance for some departmentsrelevant with tourism and promoting the development of tourism.
During the translation practice, because of the big differences between Chineseand English culture and language, the translator came across the following difficulties:(1) the translation of culture-loaded words; (2) the translation of long sentences. Underthe guidance of Skopos Theory, the translator considered that the translation of travelguide should focus on the target text readers and the translated version should be inaccordance with the writing features of the target text and cater to the target readers. Combined with detailed examples, the translator put forward the followingstrategies: (1) addition,omission and compression; (2) integrating and splittingsentences. This report proposed the corresponding specific strategies, which can offersome referential value to the translators to translate the tourism texts.
Abstract
Since Dewey developed the concept of “critical thinking”, many scholars abroadhave carried out a series of studies about improving students' critical thinking skills ineducation field. In the 1980s,critical thinking became the target of higher educationprograms in such foreign countries as the US and Canada. It has gained its widespreadattention in China only in recent years. But there are only few studies about it ineducation field. Our traditional English teaching method pays much attention to thetraining of students' linguistic knowledge and language skills but ignores thecultivation of students' critical thinking abilities. In the process of skill practice,teachers often stress the importance of memorizing vocabulary and imitating skillsrigidly,but neglect the students' abilities in analyzing problems and putting forwardinnovative solutions. Therefore, English writing teaching is affected by this andmerely attaches emphasis to train students' reading and writing skills. There are fewstudies which aim at systematically cultivating students' analysis, synthesis, summary,comparison and reasoning skills while they are writing. Therefore,this study aims atdesigning some writings tasks and teaching strategies which can be used to fostercollege students' critical thinking awareness and promote students' all-rounddevelopment.
According to six critical thinking skills,this study was carried out by requiringstudents to hand in an argumentation. All participants in this study are non-Englishmajor college freshmen from a 211 key university. The revised version of Rubric forQualitative Critical Thinking Skills Instrument was used in this study. Withquantitative and qualitative analysis,writing experiment is conducted within a wholesemester to collect data concerning students' learning behavior. Reading-to-write isused in experimental class while traditional method is adopted in control class. Thewriting scores by the experimental and control class were statistically processed bysoftware SPSS 19.0. And also the interview was launched in some of students inexperimental class to assess students' critical thinking abilities reflected in theirwritings-The final analysis indicated that EGAP writing model exerted a significantlypositive influence in improving students' critical thinking skills, especially in arousingstudents' writing enthusiasm and critical thinking awareness. Compared with controlclass, students in experimental class made big progress in writing competence. Inaddition, this study put forward some reform proposals to the teaching of Englishwriting. The study is of great value to instruct students to employ critical thinkingskills in their writing.