A Study Of Howard Goldblatt’s Translating Big Breasts&Wide Hips

In recent years, Mo Yan, a famous contemporary Chinese writer, has gained awide readership and great reputation in the West. The quality of translation has adirect impact on the popularity of original works and the fame of their writers abroad.It is worth mentioning that so far, all the English translations of Mo Yan’s works havebeen accomplished by Howard Goldblatt.Big Breasts&Wide Hips constitutes one of Mo Yan’s most representative works,just as Howard Goldblatt quotes the writer’s words in the introduction of its Englishversion:“If you like, you can skip my other novels, but you must read Big Breasts&Wide Hips”(Mo Yan,2000:173). The book has attracted wide attention frominfluential media such as New Yorker and The Washington Post, as well as scholarsand sinologists, thus setting a good example for other Chinese literary works aimed toenter foreign markets.Admittedly, Howard Goldblatt carries great weight in the success of Big Breasts&Wide Hips overseas. However, studies on Goldblatt’s translating Big Breasts&Wide Hips are rare currently. On the one hand, previous studies on Mo Yan’s worksare largely conducted from literary perspectives, while only a few translation studiesare made on corresponding English versions. And on the other, studies on Goldblattare confined to his translation achievements and life experiences, with few casestudies properly targeting the translator and his specific translations.For a long time, traditional translation theories are focused on the source text andmainly confined to the linguistic level to discuss how to achieve faithfulness andequivalence in translation, with the translator placed in a marginalized position. Withthe advent of cultural turn in translation studies, new theories start to shift their focusto the translator, thus establishing the translator’s status as a subject.This thesis explores the factors that influence Goldblatt’s preparation fortranslating Big Breasts&Wide Hips and the art in his actual translating process basedon an elaborate analysis of the original work and its English version, in order to find the reasons that lead to the success of this novel in the West. The findings areillustrated as follows: First, Goldblatt’s views on translation have obviously guidedhis translating practices. Both his personal taste and literary interest have an impact onhis selection of original work. Second, during the translating process, Goldblatt notonly makes overall alteration of the source text, but also adopts domestication as amain strategy with foreignization as a complementary one, in a bid to make readableand marketable English version. However, Goldblatt’s translation of Big Breasts&Wide Hips has its own limitations, mainly due to language difference between Englishand Chinese and the translator’s bi-cultural competence. Finally, this study ishopefully to bring some implications to the transmission of other contemporaryChinese literary works abroad.