Mo Yan’s Big Breasts And Wide Hips:Its Metonymic Mechanism And English Translation

Novels play a significant role in broadcasting the culture of a country to the world. Mo Yan, a writer from China, is the winner of the 2012 Nobel Prize for Literature. Since it is the very first time that a Chinese has the Nobel Prize, Mo Yan enjoyed world-wide reputation while his works attracted attention from the world. His novels appeals to people all over the world and are translated from Chinese into many languages. Mo Yan’s works abound in metonymic phenomena, which is of vital importance for the readers’ understanding his writing intentions. Thus, it is necessary that metonymy should be translated as accurately as possible so that English readers can grasp Mo Yan’s original information.Based on the theories of metonymy, this paper intends to carry out an analysis of the role metonymies play in Mo Yan’s Big Breasts and Wide Hips, which is one of his representatives and is popular with readers in English-speaking countries. Moreover,the author explores how metonymies are translated from Chinese into English with a reference to Howard Goldblatt’s English version of Big Breasts and Wide Hips. The qualitative method is employed in this study, which consists of three parts: the analysis of the role metonymies play in the source text, the study of translation strategies applied to metonymies in the source text, and the exploration for translatability of metonymies from Chinese into English.The major findings of this study are as follows: To begin with, a series of metonymies in the source text can be classified into predicational metonymy,event-schema metonymy, effect-cause metonymy, referential metonymy, metonymic euphemism and illocutionary metonymy, etc. Besides, the translation strategies applied to metonymies in the source text are composed of application of the source language vehicle, application of the source language target, application of the vehicle unique to the target language and omission of source language vehicle, etc. Lastly, the translatability and limits for translatability of metonymy from Chinese to English has been to some degree explored, especially, the limits for translatability of metonymy is closely related to culture underlying languages, the unique constructions of different languages and whether a vehicle in the SL can find a vehicle in the TL standing for the same target.This study broadens the translation strategies for metonymy based on the examples from Mo Yan’s Big Breasts and Wide Hips and their translation by Howard Goldblatt, for it is necessary that the translation strategies of metonymies should befurther enriched. Besides, it detects the C-E translatability of metonymy with an aim to find elements that are bound to prevent the translatability of metonymy from Chinese into English.