A Stylistic Approach To The Translation: Life And Death Are Wearing Me Out

Mo Yan(莫言,2006) works out his Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out 《(生死疲劳》)in just forty-three days, which was published in2006and translated intoEnglish by Howard Goldblatt(2008), a famous American Sinologist. Life and DeathAre Wearing Me Out is written out with the type of traditional Chinese novels withcaptions for each chapter and the folk narration. Its Chinese version and Englishversion are both worth studying. This thesis is based on the literary stylistics to talkabout the stylistic features of the translated version by Howard Goldblatt, and to talkabout the translation effect of his translation.This thesis, in order to study how to reproduce the spiritual meaning of theoriginal text in translation, uses the basic theoretical frame of stylistics to analysis thetranslation version in three aspects: narrative point of view, linguistic style, and plotstructure. Literary stylistics studies the thematic meaning and aesthetic value of theliterary works. Firstly, this thesis studies the translation under different narrativepoint of view. In the process of translation, the translator pays attention to thechanges of narrative point of view and the related change of the discourses of thecharacters, and adjusts them in translation and its style. Secondly, this thesis studiesthe way of transmitting the linguistic style. The linguistic form of the translationinfluences the effect of transmitting the style of the original text, and the translatorcorrectly deals with the grammar and linguistics in the translation. Lastly, this thesisstudies the plot structure in the translation. In the translation, the translator neglectstranslating several paragraphs of the original text, which has an effect ontransforming the style of the original text. As for the translators who work on theliterary works, to accurately deal with stylistic features of the literary worksinfluences the effect of the translation.The author of this thesis, through studying the translation of Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out, hopes to enrich the literary translation study, to further studying therelationships of the style of the original texts and target texts, and to be helpful in theprocess of introducing Chinese literature into the world.