| Lang Tuteng, a semi-autobiographical and epic novel, is written by Lu Jiamin under the penname of Jiang Rong. It took the author30years to complete this book which records his personal experiences on the grasslands of China’s border regions. As an ecological fiction concerning humanity and nature, Lang Tuteng has created a sensation in China and has been a best seller in the country since2004. So far, it has been translated into almost all major languages in the world, including English, French, and Italian. The Penguin Group has paid100,000dollars for its English copyright, setting a record in the Chinese book copyright trade. It was translated into English by Howard Goldblatt, a renowned American sinologist and prolific translator. Since Wolf Totem, the English version of Lang Tuteng, came out in2008, it has received wide recognition in English-speaking countries, as can be seen from many in-depth reviews, most of which were commendatory, published in prestigious newspapers and magazines, such as The Washington Post, The New York Times, The National Geographic, The Guardian, The Independent, and The Financial Times, to name but a few. Besides, the circulation of Wolf Totem is record-breaking in the sales of translated Chinese novels. Undoubtedly, the success of Wolf Totem in Western countries is largely ascribable to the translator’s selection of translation strategies.The translation strategies of Lang Tuteng can be elucidated from the following aspects. In Wolf Totem, over20%of the contents of the original has been dropped out. Meanwhile, a "Translator’s Note" and a map are added at the beginning. A glossary explaining some cultural terms is attached to the end. Domestication is predominant in dealing with linguistic factors to make the target text idiomatic and even more readable than the original version, while foreignization is employed to render some culture-related expressions.After2009, some studies about Lang Tuteng and its English version have been carried out from the perspectives of Reception Theory, Deconstruction Theory, and Translator’s Subjectivity and so on. As a lot of parts have been omitted in Wolf Totem, omission can be clearly seen to be one of the major strategies applied by Goldblatt. But it has not aroused much attention in the previous studies. Therefore, this paper concerns the reasons of omission adopted in Wolf Totem and intends to provide some suggestions for adopting the strategy in translation. This paper contains four parts besides the Introduction and the Conclusion. The Introduction explicates the research subject and the structure of the paper. Then, in the first two chapters, reviews about previous studies of Lang Tuteng and its English version and brief introductions to the background of the two books are given. Chapter Three concerns omission, including the definition of it in translation studies and the classification of it. To lay a foundation for further discussion, the omitted parts and their roles in Lang Tuteng are also investigated. Chapter Four discusses the reasons for employing omission in Wolf Totem with an analysis from the external and internal aspects. As a result, Goldblatt s alternative of omission has been influenced by the target culture, the target readership, the patronage, the target language, and his accepted translation norms and abilities. Although plenty of parts are dropped out in translation, Wolf Totem has still succeeded in winning over western readers. It suggests that as long as a translator takes all influential factors into account, he can turn to omission to fulfill the aim of a translation. |
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