On Creative Treason In Howard Goldblatt’s Translation Of Lang Tuteng

Since 1960s, translation studies have made great progress and multiple research perspectives have appeared. On one hand, some scholars have found out that traditional translation studies which mainly focused on languages and cultures were out-of-date; on the other hand, German Functionalist Skopostheorie represented by Vermeer and Creative treason Theory represented by Escarpit started to study translation from the Perspective of translational purposes, or Skopos. Vermeer holds the view that the translator can adopt whatever translation strategies to meet his or her purposes. In other words, the end justifies the means. Escarpit holds the view that translation is always a sort of creative treason. Translation is a creative treason in that the original work is placed in a totally unpredictable reference frame, and translation is endowed with a brand-new visage. It happens that Skopostheorie holds the view that translation is a purposeful activity and that it can give some enlightenment on creative treason in translating.Lang Tuteng is a semi-autobiography novel recording the author Jiang Rong’s real life experience in Inner Mongolia for many years. Also it is an ecological novel on the relationship between human being and the wolf. Since its publication in 2004, it has been reprinted more than 150 times, nearly 5 million copies of the original. Its great success in Chinese market has drawn significant attention from abroad and by now, there are altogether 26 versions of Lang Tuteng in different language (including English, French, Italian, etc). Among them, the English version has received the first "Asian Man Literary Prize." In view of this, the present thesis tries to analyze the edited translation, deletion and other creative treason translation strategies in the English translation of Lang Tuteng from the Skopostheorie to see how the translator attained his purposes of translation. The thesis consists of six parts. Chapter one gives an introduction to the research background, significance and structure of the thesis. Chapter two is literature review. Chapter three is a brief introduction to the theoretical basis including the basic ideas of Skopostheorie. Chapter four is about creative treason in literary translation focusing on the subject and the type of creative treason. Chapter five is the body part, which gives an in-depth analysis of the Wolf Totem in creative treason from the perspective of Skopostheorie. Chapter six summarizes the whole thesis.