Rewriting, Manipulation And Translation Of Lang Tuteng

In his translation of Lang Tuteng, Howard Goldblatt does not fully conform to fidelity orfaithfulness, a yardstick universally accepted where translation is concerned. Instead, heintervenes and rewrites the original text to a large degree. Since the publication of Wolf Totemin2008, however, the English version has pulled off a huge success among Western audienceand helped the translator win the Man Asia Literary Prize. In recent years, Goldblatt’s successhas been arousing great interest and wild sensation among scholars at home and abroad. And itis our belief that the topic is worth further investigation. Therefore, the present thesis, based onthe theoretical assumption and framework of Skopos, readers’ reception as well manipulation,aims to uncover the underlying reasons of the book’s success and explore the fundamentalcauses of its rewriting and manipulation in the process of the translation.This thesis consists of five parts. The first part introduces the theoretical and practicalsignificance of this thesis; the second part attempts a review and analysis of the studies relatedto such theories as Skopos, readers’ reception and manipulation. In addition, this part alsoreviews the previous research on Wolf Totem and identifies the flaws in it which providesjustification for the present study; the third part discusses the reasons why Lang Tuteng waschosen to be translated and published in the first place and what ideological and poeticalfactors account for its wide reception among foreign readers; the fourth part analyzes theinfluence of ideology, poetics and readers’ reception on the translation of Lang Tuteng. Thefifth part concludes that the rewriting of Lang Tuteng greatly contributes to the success of WolfTotem. It is further pointed out that the success of translation involves taking such parametersas translation purpose, ideology, poetics and readers’ reception into consideration. The successof Wolf Totem shows that translating is making compromises. And in days to come, thetranslation of other Chinese literary works into foreign languages also entails compromises.