Creative Treason In Howard Goldblatt’s English Translation Of Big Breasts And Wide Hips

Since the distinguished Chinese novelist and short story writer Mo Yan received the Nobel Prize in Literature, the discussion about standards of literature translation and spreading and acceptance of Chinese literature has reignited scholars’enthusiasm. Domestic scholars begin to discover new and fresh concepts contained in the traditional "fidelity" of translation standards. "Creative treason" thus deeply re-attracts their attention. The discussion about "fidelity" and "treason" is growing vigorously and the voice calling for Chinese literature going global is getting louder and louder.The term "creative treason" was first mentioned by French literary sociologist Robert Escarpit. (Escarpit1987:137) Professor Xie Tianzhen wholly agrees with this idea and introduces it into China. In chapter three of his book Medio-translatology (2013), he makes systematic, comprehensive and deep explanation on creative treason in literature translation from the perspectives of creative treason in literature translation, creative treason among mediators and creative treason in accepting environment. After that, scholar Dong Ming also discusses the relations between creative treason and language, creative treason and understanding, creative treason and expression and so on in his book Translation:Creative Treason (2006), pointing out that creative treason is objective and inevitable.Mo Yan’s translators have made great contribution to his award and Goldblatt is one of the most important translators to him. Goldblatt has translated seven Mo Yan’s novels and they are wildly recognized and appreciated by the readers and scholars. This thesis takes the Big Breasts and Wide Hips translated by Goldblatt as research case, takes creative treason as theoretic instruction, and takes the three features of creative treason-individualized translation, mistranslation and adaptation as research approaches. Thus, the creative treason in individualized translation will be studied through making analysis on translation of names, idiom and chinoiserie; creative treason in mistranslation will be studied through making analysis on conscious translation, unconscious translation and omitted translation at linguistic level and textual level.; creative treason in adaptation will be studied through making analysis on rearrangement of structure and logic and added translation. By those studies, the conclusion can be made that creative treason is not indeed a betrayal but another kind of fidelity, one both to the reader and writer.Given that Glodblatt’s translation makes a great contribution to the successful spread and acceptance of Mo Yan’s works, this dissertation attempts to discuss the reasons behind the success through making analysis on Big Breasts and Wide Hips translated by Goldblatt and find effective ways for Chinese literature better going out. This dissertation discusses the problems that Chinese literature going out will face, digs out the enlightment that Mo Yan’s success brings to us and proposes corresponding solutions and measures through analysis in three aspects:subjects in medio-translatology, mediators in medio-translatology and acceptance in medio-translatology.