Translation Strategies Of Chinese Novel: With Howard Goldblatt’s English Version Of The Republic Of Wine By Mo Yan As A Case Study

In the last two decades, the Chinese government laid special stress on raising thenation’s soft power and emphasized on introducing Chinese culture and literary worksabroad, so that Chinese culture and literary works can make greater contributions tothe world. Literature as an important part of Chinese culture is endowed with themission of spreading the culture. Compared to poetry, prose and drama, Chinesefiction is the best way to accomplish this mission, because, as the mainstream ofChinese literature, Chinese novels concretely represent in detail myriads of Chineselives in every aspects of which China’s culture infiltrates. In order to obtainidentification from the TL readers and attract them with its literary charm, it is the toppriority to improve translation of Chinese novel. And reasonable translation strategiesare the key to it.However, historically, most achievements in literary translation in China aremade from translation of foreign literature rather than from translation of local literaryworks in the20th century. Therefore, studies on strategy of literary translation inChina are generally confined to translation of foreign works. Till recent years, somescholars begin to pay attention to strategies of translating Chinese literature and thestudies are quite limited. But nobody studies strategies of translating Chinese novel.Therefore, in this thesis, specific and reasonable strategies are put forward fortranslating Chinese novel.Firstly, according to China’s social need of introducing Chinese culture andliterature abroad in21st century, Venuti’s foreignizing and domesticating translationstrategies with the consideration of cultural, political, and economical factors aretaken as the theoretical basis of this thesis to study strategies of translating Chinesenovel. It is believed that foreignization and domestication are not contrary, butcompromised and coordinated. On the ground of this, in the thesis, foreignizing anddomesticating translation strategies are subdivided into four types: linguisticforeignization, cultural foreignization, linguistic domestication and culturaldomestication, to cope with linguistic and cultural problems encountered in translatingChinese novel in a clearer way. Secondly, the four translation strategies are combined with Kenneth Burke’s core theory of new rhetoric—identification. When a Chinesenovel is translated, the four translation strategies should be employed in compromisedcoordination so as to maintain identification between the translator and the writer forpreserving the literariness and cultural characteristics of the original, and at the sametime to keep identification between translator and TL readers for getting a readableand fluent translation as well as protecting TL readers’ enjoyment of aesthetic valueand exotic flavor. The ultimate goal is to achieve identification between TL readersand the author in order to accomplish the mission of Chinese novel spreading China’sculture abroad. Finally, Goldblatt’s translation of The Republic of Wine by Mo Yan istaken as a case study to analyze in practice the proposed translation strategies. Thisstudy is hopefully to play a role in enhancing the quality of translation of Chinesenovel.