On Howard Goldblatt’s Translation Of Life And Death Are Wearing Me Out In Terms Of Three Dimensions Of Translation Ethics

Mo Yan won the Nobel Prize for literature in 2012. Since then, it has whipped up ―Mo Yan hot‖ around the world. To a great degree, it is due to the successful dissemination of Mo Yan’s works overseas. Many translators have translated Mo Yan’s works, Howard Goldblatt is the one who translates Mo Yan’s works most and is the only English translator. So far, Howard Goldblatt has translated Mo Yan’s 7 works and all of them are published, which makes Mo Yan enjoy a high reputation in the western world. Mo Yan finished Sheng Si Pi Lao in 2006, which won Mo Yan the most international awards. Its English version Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out was translated by Howard Goldblatt in 2008, which makes this work won the first ―Newman Chinese literature‖ in the United States. At the same time, this work is also recommended as one of the outstanding world literary works by the Washington Post. It is visible that Mo Yan’s novel Sheng Si Pi Lao is one of the successful examples of the dissemination of contemporary Chinese literature.The objective dimension includes the relationships of the translator and the original text, the translator and the translated text. The social dimension involves the relationships of the translator and the original author, the translator and the readers, the translator and the consignor, the translator and the source language and target language culture. The subjective dimension points to the relationship of the self-translator and other-translator.This article means to explore the relationship of the translator and all other translation factors as well as discuss translation ethics relations which are embodied in the course of translating Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out. It mainly discusses from the objective dimension, the social dimension and the subjective dimension of the three dimensions of translation ethics, trying to make clear the ethical relationship of all the elements that are involved in the translation. It has come to the following conclusion: translation is a kind of cross-linguistic, cross-cultural and cross-social human communication activities. The process of translation will be affected by ethics. The objective dimension, the social dimension and the subjective dimension affect the translator Howard Goldblatt from different aspects. Only by exploring the relationship of the translator and the elements that are involved in the translation from all aspects can we provide translation strategies and skills for those who engage in Chinese fiction translation, so as to promote Chinese literature to reach western readers and go into the western mainstream culture.