Multiple Perspectives On Howard Goldblatt’s Translation Of Wolf Totem:A Novel

The Wolf Totem:A Novel has led a heat wave to readers in China, and has been sold more than1,000,000books in a year. In2008, its English version has been released. The best-selling of Wolf Totem:A Novel has turned out to be a national phenomenon, which has caused widespread academic concern.Scholars try to explore and explain its artistic attraction from various perspectives such as literature, Eco-criticism,history,society and so on. And for its English version, some scholars tend to analyze it through different methods,like skopos theory, subjectivity,manipulation theory. Most of them, however, were confined to use a single aspect to interpret the translator’s strategy rather than explaining it as a version influenced by translator,readers,publisher and the western critics. By analyzing the English version of Wolf Totem.A Novel from various angles,the author tends to discover some inspiration and introspection for the overseas transmission of Chinese literature.The translator, Howard Goldblatt, is a famous American sinologist and translator. In1960s,he was a naval officer in Taiwan where he figured out his talent in Chinese,then he went back to his hometown and studied as a PHD in Chinese Modern and Contemporary Literature. Besides writing some essays about Chinese modern and contemporary literature, he has constantly translated a number of literatures for almost thirty years.As a translator, Howard Goldblatt links up theory with practice, so his versions all abide by his own translation principles. As a translator, especially a fictional translator, he always sees readers’ needs as an important part in his translation. Therefore, we can see a great deal of strategies used in his translations started with considering readers’ needs. He tries his utmost to reproduce the novel and avoid the sense of strangeness. But in literary translation, not only should the translator comply with his own principles, but also would he be confined to the publisher. Translators barely have the power to make decisions, while the publisher decides the composition and abridgment of a version basing on the market instead of literature itself. Consequently, the English version of Wolf Totem:A Novel was cut down almost50,000words on account of considering the market.The concern of Wolf Totem:A Novel at home and abroad has been affected by the popularization and marketing of the publisher. And yet, from the comments of western critics,we can see that even though the publisher emphasized the universal theme of this novel, the critics still deconstructed this novel by the permanent other image of China. So, when we were shocked by the successful overseas transmission of Wolf Totem:A Novel, we should be aware of the problem facing in front of us--the lack of subjectivity.This thesis,based on the achievement what Howard Goldblatt got on translation and his researches about Chinese modern and contemporary literature,analyzes his translative traits from different angles by combining his translation theory. As for the analysis,on the one hand,with the translation theory of Howard Goldblatt,we try to discover how he used his principles in the translation of Wolf Totem:A Novel. On the other hand, we intend to analyze how he chose his translation strategies from different angles by considering the effects of translator,readers and publisher. Then, we present the marginal position of Chinese literature in western countries, and hope to use the successful experience of Wolf Totem:A Novel as an example to demonstrate the effects of publishers at home and abroad. Meanwhile, we should focus on the problems about the overseas transmission of Chinese literature as well.The conclusion discusses the theoretical significance and the practice value as well as deficiencies in this research, and meanwhile propose the possible space for the further research.