On The English Translations Of Mo Yan’s Works In The Light Of André Lefevere’s Rewriting Theory

Mo Yan is the first Chinese novelist to win the Nobel Prize for literature. Among all the translators of Mo Yan’s works, Howard Goldblatt, being his only English translator, played an indisputably important role in Mo Yan’s winning of the Nobel Prize. Wa is Mo Yan’s first major publication in western countries since his winning of the Nobel Prize, and Frog, its English translation, is also Howard Goldblatt’s latest translation of Mo’s work. As the English version was so newly-published that few researches have been done about it at home and abroad, it is of great significance to study the work.This thesis undertakes a comprehensive and detailed analysis of Wa and its English version Frog translated by Howard Goldblatt in light of the Rewriting Theory. The first chapter mainly introduces the research background, research questions, the significance and layout of the thesis. In the second chapter, a review of the work Wa and the studies on the translations of Mo Yan’s works are undertaken from different angles. The third chapter is the theoretical framework, which gives a survey as well as a critical review of André Lefevere’s Rewriting Theory and the three key constraints influencing rewriting——ideology, poetics and patronage.Chapter 4 and Chapter 5 are the main body of the thesis. With a large number of concrete examples and some tables, the present author analyzes the influence of the Rewriting Theory on the selecting and translating of the work Wa. Through the analysis, it is found that the translator adapted to the ideology and poetics of the target culture and “rewrote” in his translation some politically sensitive expressions, religious expressions and culture-loaded words so that the translated work can be better accepted by the target language readers.