A Study Of Howard Goldblatt’s Red Sorghum

Red Sorghum is the masterpiece of Mo Yan, the first Chinese national to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. The English version Red Sorghum has been popular among foreign readers since its publication and remains the best-received one among Mo Yan’s works. Based on Toury’s translational norm theory, this thesis attempts to employ how norms work at each stage of Goldblatt’s translation process and the reason for the popularity of Red Sorghum in the West.Toury holds that translation is norm governed and distinguishes three kinds of translational norms:preliminary norms, initial norms and operational norms. Preliminary norms are subdivided into translation policy and directness of translation. Operational norms include matricial norms and text-linguistic norms. Preliminary norms operate before translation, with translation policy describing factors affecting the translator’s selection of the source text, and directness of translation concerning whether translation occurs through a third language. Initial norms relate to the translator’s general choice. If he is towards the source language, the translation will be adequate; if he is towards the target language, the translation will be acceptable. Functioning in actual translation process, operational norms describe the presentation and linguistic matters of target texts. Matricial norms deal with target texts’completeness, while text-linguistic norms relate to the selection of concrete linguistic materials to form the translated text.A case study of the English version Red Sorghum is carried out to analyze why Goldblatt selects it as the source text, what his overall translation strategy is and its affecting factors, as well as how he manipulates text construction and concrete linguistic materials.The author concludes that the popularity of Red Sorghum in the West is largely attributed to Goldblatt’s excellent translation which is target-reader-oriented and conforms to the translational norms. Translational norms function during the entire translational activity. Different norms affect Goldblatt’s decision making at each stage of his translation process.To be specific, preliminary norms concern the translator’s choice of the source text. Goldblatt’s selection of Red Sorghum is attributed to western readers’expectation of Chinese historical stories, Goldblatt’s love of Mo Yan’s novels, and the publishing house’s preference of it. Initial norms deal with the translator’s overall translation strategy. Goldblatt is more target-reader-oriented since he mainly adopts domestication strategy. It is Goldblatt’s consideration of western readers’receptivity of natural and idiomatic language as well as the preferred domestication strategy in the West that leads him to make such choice. Operational norms describe the translator’s manipulation of text construction and concrete linguistic materials. Omission, paragraph division and reconstruction are adopted to make the English version more concise and clear-cut. When dealing with appellation, idioms, localism, culture-specific words, Goldblatt mainly adopts domestication to enhance the translation’s readability, and appropriate use of foreignization is also made to preserve the original language’s flavor as much as possible.