The Aesthetic Representation In Red Sorghum From The Perspective Of Skopos Theory

Honggaoliang Jiazu, written by Mo Yan, has been a big heat in China since itspublishing in1987. It not only valued Chinese filmmaker Zhang Yimou to theforefront of the Fifth Generation directors, but also has drawn the public’s attention tothe Chinese novel. Because of the unique style, fascinating stories, this book not onlyarouses heat discuss over Chinese readers, but also attracts the attention frommainstream medias in American and European countries. So far, it has been translatedinto nearly20major languages in the world, including English, German, French,Spanish, Japanese and so on. The English version Red Sorghum, translated by HowardGoldblatt, was published in1993. Because of the good job of Goldblatt, Red Sorghumnot only reserves the beauty of the source text, but also reveals the real Chineseculture to the western readers. His successful experience is worth learning andstudying.The author attempts to apply the skopos theory to make a case study of RedSorghum. Firstly developed in Germany in1970s, Skopos theory proposes that thepurpose of translation determines the translational action. And the translator shouldfully consider the target text receivers’ needs and the culture of the target text intranslational process. Some scholars don’t think this theory can be used to study onthe translation of literary for there is no skopos of literary. However, the author hasdifferent opinion.In this thesis, the author will solve3following questions: Whether Skopostheory can be used for studying the translation in Red Sorghum? How are threebeauties of language reproduced in Red Sorghum? What is the major translationalskopos of Goldblatt in Red Sorghum? Aiming at answering these questions, In theframework of Skopos theory and Xu Yuanchong’s Three Beauties principle, this thesisanalyzes the three beauties of the original text and the reproduction of these threebeauties in the translations in a systematic and detailed way.“Three Beauties”principle was proposed by the famous Chinese translator Xu Yuanchong and wasregarded as the standard for poetry translation, especially for Chinese classical poetry translation. Professor Xu regards that Translation is a special art. Whiletranslating, the translator must express the content, artistic conception, image, rhythmand writing style of the original text in another language and enable the target readerto enjoy the beauty of the original. Under the “Three Beauties” principle, the authoranalyzed the scopos of translator and explained how the scopos influence histranslation strategy and reproduce the beauty of the original.This thesis, adopting the case analysis, analyzes Red Sorghum written by HowardGoldblatt. The thesis consists of5chapters: Chapter1introduced background,significance, objective, structure and put forward research questions of the research,Chapter2introduced the literature review on functional translation theory abroad andat home, Chapter3is a brief introduction to the adopted theories: Skopos theory andXu’s aesthetic thoughts, Chapter4combines the theory with works to analyze theaesthetic presentation from the perspective of skopos theory, Chapter5is a conclusion,pointing out the major findings, the limitations and further suggestions. From thesystematical analysis, the thesis has drawn the conclusion that according to Skopostheory, the translator can choose different way to translate literature on account of hisskopos, which is mostly to reproduce the beauty of the source text.