Analysis Of Howard Goldblatt’s Version Of HuLanHeZhuan From The Perspective Of Game Theory

HuLanHe Zhuan is the most outstanding masterpiece after The Field of Life and Death, which has once rocked the sphere of literature. It’s the representative works of Xiao Hong’s later life, which is rich in linguistically creative elements, cultural words and idioms that pose great difficulty for the translator.Game theory is about interactive strategy making. Translation is just a game, for the process of translation is the game where the players make strategies based on their judgment of the other players’ reaction. All the elements of a game are covered in translation. The player(the translator) is possessed with certain amount of information about the other players(the original writer, the target readers, the publisher) and their payoffs and strategies to make their own strategies with an aim to maximize their own payoffs.By means of game theory and the game models with mathematics matrix, this paper will objectively analyze the games played among the players in the translation of HuLanHe Zhuan. It will concretely present the abstract decision-making process of the translator and comprehensively analyze how the translator is to deal with other players so as to achieve Nash Equilibrium and Pareto Optimality. More importantly, this paper is to go further and deeper to analyze the cultural, social, and political reasons behind the objective numbers in the mathematics matrix.This thesis is to be divided into five chapters. Chapter 1 serves to introduce the background, the literature review and game theory. Chapter 2 to Chapter 4 is the main part of the thesis. In this part, the three games respectively between the translator and the original writer, the target readers, the publisher will be analyzed to reproduce the decision-making process of the translator in the translation game and uncover how the translator deals with payoff distribution in making his final decisions so as to achieve Nash Equilibrium and Pareto Optimality. Chapter 5 strives to conclude the whole thesis through giving a review of preceding chapters and rethink the shining points and drawbacks of this thesis.As a result of the comprehensive analysis, this paper comes to the conclusion that Goldblatt has flexibly chosen a diversified set of strategies in translating different types of contents in this single novel after a rather abstract and complicated decision-makingprocess so as to achieve Nash Equilibrium and Pareto Optimality and to maximize the utilities of most players in the game of translation.Besides that, this paper has got a slightest idea of transmitting Chinese literature. Because of the peripheral position Chinese literature possesses and the receiving capability of western readers, most translators, Goldblatt included, are more target reader-oriented and translate the works at the sacrifice of the original flavors. But this is a must-go way for Chinese literature to go abroad. The transmission of a country’s culture needs a process, and the sacrifices are necessary to achieve that end during the preliminary period.