A Systemic-functional Approach To Manipulation Of Translation:

Hong Gao Liang Jia Zu, the most representative work of the Nobel Prize Literature laureate Mo Yan, is famous for its audacious and novel style in China. Its English version. Red Sorghum, was translated by the distinguished Chinese-English translator Howard Goldblatt and has won wide recognition in Western countries. Mo Yan once praised this English version as "if not by Howard Goldblatt, we cannot have such a perfect version..."(Mo Yan,2000) The preeminent translation, however, does not necessarily mean the absolute fidelity of the source text. Even Goldblatt himself admits that translation is a kind of treason and rewriting is inevitable in the translation process, which suggests that rewriting activities have really occurred in his translation.The present paper, therefore, aims at conducting a systematic study on Glodblatt’s manipulation in translation of Red Sorghum. By revisiting the Rewriting Theory (RT) from the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL). it argues that while RT is devoted on the macro level to figuring out the rewriting contents of Red Sorghum according to two major constraining factors, i.e. ideology and poetics, SFL can then be adopted on the micro level to offer a systematic and objective description via discourse analysis. In this paper, the two research paradigms are integrated. One is a systemic analysis of the rewriting on the lexicogrammatical stratum, for semantic manipulation is realized by lexicogrammatical rewriting. The other is a functional analysis on the rewriting, particularly on the manipulation of the English translation with respects to the transitivity system and interpersonal resources. The transitivity analysis mainly accounts for rewriting for an effective construction of plots, while the interpersonal analysis focuses mainly on the manipulation of interaction within the novel.The major findings of the present research confirm the assumption that rewriting activities frequently occur in Goldblatt’s translation, for the sake of the target readers’ contemporary ideological patterns and poetic expectation. The Systemic analysis reveals that simplification, substitution and deletion are usually introduced to deal with political-sensitive or complicated plots; addition, such as Christian faith or sexual-related plot, is employed to cater to the target cultural preference; as for the cultural-specific expressions, analogy and simplification occur alternatively. In the functional research, the transitivity analysis suggests process shifts and component shifts within the process own high efficiency in plot rebuilding; while the interpersonal resources are rewritten mainly via mood shifts, polarity shifts and interference within the reference system.The current research is of both theoretical and practical significance. Theoretically, it is designed to illustrate the feasibility of integrating the Rewriting Theory with Systemic Function Linguistics, which is proposed here as a tentative approach to translation studies; practically, a systemic functional analysis of Glodblatt’s ingenious rewriting is deemed to enlighten the translation of contemporary Chinese literary works into English so that a more effective bridge can be built for intercultural communication between China and Western countries.