| In the late1970s, Hans J. Vermeer, one of the German functionalist founders,put forward the skopos theory. He thinks that translation is not a simple exchange oflanguages, but a purposeful cross-cultural activity. For him, translation means toproduce a text in a target setting for a target purpose and target addressees in targetcircumstances. Therefore, translators should take the expectable function as itsskopos on the basis of the analysis of the source text, and choose best translationmethods.Honggaoliang, created by Mo Yan and set in Northeast Gaomi Township, is arepresentative novel of root-seeking literature. It is filled up with a strong Chinesenational flavor and local folklore color. Howard Goldblatt is a celebrated Americantranslator and sinologist. Red Sorghum, the English version of Honggaoliangtranslated by him, is one of Mo Yan’s Nobel Prize-winning works in2012forliterature. Howard Goldblatt not only reproduced the target text as close as possibleto the original text in the choice of words and rhetorical devices, but also accuratelyconveyed the content and style of the source text in the target text, which makes thetarget readers find everything fresh and new.This thesis is structured within the frame of skopos theory to study the Englishversion of Honggaoliang written by Mo Yan. It first introduces the theory origin andacademic background of skopos theory, and then focuses on illustrating skopostheory and its three rules, i.e. skopos rule, coherence rule and fidelity rule.The thesis adopts the method of case study. Through giving examples, itseparately analyzes the translation of culture-loaded words and marked collocationsunder the guidance of skopos rule. Culture-loaded words possess distinct cultureidentity which can best reflect the cultural information of a language and people’ssocial life. The application of marked collocations is an important manifestation ofthe writing technique of Mo Yan’s magical realism. These two kinds of expressionsembody the unique feature of Honggaoliang respectively from aspects of culture andlanguage. In the process of translation, Howard Goldblatt has handled with these two words so skillfully that the translated text appropriately fulfills the purpose ofspreading Chinese culture and reproducing Chinese people’s life and spirit inAnti-Japanese War to western readers. Secondly, the thesis analyzes the sentencecoherence and textual coherence under the guidance of coherence rule. English andChinese belong to different language families. Hypotaxis and parataxis endow themwith distinctive language features. In the process of Howard Goldblatt’s translation,the target text has achieved the effect of coherence through adjusting the sequence ofsentences, substituting the images, splitting and combining paragraphs. Last, itanalyzes the loyalty of style and figure of speech to the source text under theguidance of fidelity rule. Even though skopos theory denies the supremacy of thesource text, it tries to accurately reproduce the original content and style on thepremise of fulfilling the expected purpose.This study finds out that in the process of translating Honggaoliang, HowardGoldblatt has adopted several translation methods, such as substitution, addition,omission and negation, in order to fulfill his expected translation purpose and ensurethe coherence of the target text and the fidelity to the source text.The study leads to the conclusion that Howard Goldblatt’s translation ofHonggaoliang fulfills the expected purpose and appropriately spreads Chineseculture. The coherence and readability of the target text have been strengthenedthrough the adoption of adequate translation methods. At the same time, the targettext reproduced of the original content and style. In addition, the study of the use ofskopos theory on Honggaoliang fills the blank of the previous translation studies onthis text. In the meanwhile, the study also proves that skopos theory can analyzesand explain the phenomena of literary texts. |
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