| With furtherance of cultural communications between China and the West, lots ofChinese novels written in modern and contemporary times have been translated into Englishand published overseas, which have attracted much attention from the English readers. MoYan is a Chinese writer with considerable influence at home and abroad, and in2012, becamethe first Chinese writer to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. A lot of his novels have beentranslated into English by H. Goldblatt and published in America. Goldblatt, a famousAmerican Sinologist, has worked for the translation of Chinese modern and contemporarynovels and has made great achievement. In the present situation of imbalanced exchangesbetween China and the West culture in translation, his translations play a very important rolein the spreading of the Chinese novels to the English speaking world. Fengru Feitun is one ofthe representative novels of Mo Yan, and Goldblatt’s English translation Big Breasts and WideHips has been well received among English readers. It is of some typical significance andacademic value to study the translation of the novel, which is positive to the cause of thetranslation of Chinese literature and its research.The present research project is an attempt to explore the Chinese novel and its translationfrom the perspective of narratology. The research questions include: From the perspective ofnarratology, what creative changes has the translator made in rendering the Chinese novel intoEnglish? From the perspective of narratology, what kinds of translation strategies hasGoldblatt used in translating Fengru Feitun? The author will incorporate the theory ofnarratology as her theoretical basis into the study of the translating practice of Goldblatt intranslating the novel by Mo Yan into English, with emphasis on analysis of the translator’stranslating strategies and the relevant factors, and discussion of the linguistic and literaryfeatures of the Chinese novel, the space of recreating in translating novels, and also thetranslator’s basic concepts about translation, literature, and language. This thesis is composedof six chapters. Besides Chapter One Introduction and Chapter Six Conclusion, Chapter Twois the literature review; Chapter Three discusses some basic concepts of narratology, and thebasic research frame of narratological study of translations; Chapter Four introduces Mo Yanand his novels, and makes some literary and linguistic analysis of Fengru Feitun; ChapterFive analyses Holdblatt’s translation strategies in his translation Big Breasts and Wide Hips.The major findings of the study include: First, Goldblatt’s translation principle can be named a facilitation principle. His principle is intended, while retaining the spirit and essenceof the Chinese novel in the translated version, to adapt his translation to the recipient readersand publishers. This helps objectively the spreading of the Chinese novels in the Englishspeaking world. Second, in practice, when he translates Fengru Feitun, Goldblatt implementsthe facilitation principle by his corresponding strategy. Through comparison between theoriginal work and the English version, we can find that Goldblatt seizes the theme of theoriginal work accurately, and he makes narratological readjustment consciously, whichcontributes to the success of the translation version. He carries out partial narrative adaptationof the original novel by reconstructing some of the events in the novel, and deletes somenon-narration commentary parts to simplify the narration in the translation, especially the plotconstruction, and to tight the overall structure of the translated novel, readjusting the narrativerhythm of the novel. He adds explanatory words to make the plots more fluent and readable,and omits some words for cultural reasons, which concern culturally or ideologically sensitivewords. Goldbaltt’s practice in translating Chinese literary works into English can be a modelfor the cause of Chinese literature going abroad through translation. |
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