A Study Of Goldblatt’s Rewriting In His Translation Of Mo Yan’s Shengsipilao From The Perspective Of Rewriting Theory

Translation as the bridge between China and foreign countries,has a long history.In the past thirty years,various translation approaches contend for attention and harbor different thoughts.The old studies of translation by scholars in western world pay attention to the linguistic degree,and regard translation as a transmission from one language to another language.Their translation studies concentrate on the equivalence of text and semantics,thus translation is confined in the exchange of text contrast and language information.In the 1980s,with the advent of culture turn which is put forward by Andre Levefere and Susan Bassnett,a grand turn occurs in western translation studies.Translation is placed in a grand context of culture,and Levefere and Bassnett propose that translation is not only a transmission of language but a process of cross-cultural communication.Levefere furthermore puts forward rewriting theory,in which he holds that all translation should be related with some factors and it must be influenced by ideology,poetics,patronage,etc.Translation is rewriting of the source text,to some extent.Hereafter,translation studies do not stay at the micro-level,but step forward towards macro-analysis.Before Mo Yan,no Chinese is awarded the Nobel Prize in literature,and the translation of his literary works sets a good example for the translation of Chinese literature and its going-out.With endless literature creation and his unique narrative techniques and language features,Mo Yan wins several awards.In the meantime,the translator of Mo Yan’s literature works plays an ineffaceable part in Mo Yan’s winning for most of his works are translated by the same translator,Howard Goldblatt.Howard Goldblatt is a well-known sinologist who is hailed as "the mid-wife of Chinese contemporary literature".ShengSiPiLao(English version Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out)is Mo Yan’s full-length novel,which is translated by Goldblatt and is published in 2008 by Arcade Publishing House.Once published,Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out has won several prizes.In this thesis,the writer takes the English version Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out as the study object to discuss three research questions,i.e.what are the approaches of rewriting in Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out,what factors manipulate translation in the rewriting of Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out and what can be achieved through rewriting?On the basis of analysis of the English version Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out,the following conclusions can be obtained.1)On the premise of faithfulness to the source text,the most obvious approaches of rewriting in Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out are free translation,omission,substitution and amplification.2)The translator is manipulated by reasons from inside and outside.The internal reasons comprise the translator’s views on translation,readers’reception and cultural differences.External factors contain ideology,poetics and patronage.3)Through rewriting,the textual meaning inevitably has discrepancies on the linguistic level compared with the source text,while it is more understandable for the target language readership and differences between China and foreign countries are lessened.