Creative Treason Of Red Sorghum By Howard Goldblatt From The Perspective Of Sociosemiotics

Economical and cultural contacts are becoming more and more among differentcountries because of globalization today and Chinese culture is facing a predicamentof going out under this situation. As an important part of culture, modern literaturecan well embody the greatness of Chinese culture and the quality of literal translationhas a direct relation with whether Chinese works can go out of our country and to theworld. As the masterpiece of modern litterateur Mo Yan, Red Sorghum gained manygood comments at home shortly after it was published. Years later, after thepublication of English version by the translator Howard Goldblatt, it receivedinternational recognition and high appreciation. As an excellent representative ofmodern Chinese literary translation work, Red Sorghum and its translation versionarose much attention in the academic field. Especially after Mo Yan got the NobelPrize in Literature in2012, scholars unscrambled and appreciated Red Sorghum frommany angles, which lays a good foundation for further research. But the formerresearch is somewhat limited in some aspects such as theoretical methods and specificcontent of research. Therefore, based on the former research, this thesis will penetrateinto discussing the creative treason embodied in the English version of Red Sorghumby Howard Goldblatt.Sociosemiotics emphasizes that translation is a kind of intercultural activity andtranslators should try to be loyal to the source language in the process of translation.Translation is to translate meanings, including designative meaning, linguisticmeaning and practical meaning of the original text, especially practical meaningwhich contains many cultural content. Therefore, translators should specially payattention to the cultural factors of the original text and deal with them properly. Thisthesis elaborates the definition of creative treason and its subjects including translator,reader and receptive environment and the definition and characteristics of literarytranslation. Afterwards, the author analyzes the reasons for the rise of creative treasonunder the theoretical background of sociosemiotics. The conflicts of designativemeaning, linguistic meaning and practical meaning between two cultures are the mainreasons for creative treason talked in the thesis, which lays theoretical foundation forthe later study and analysis.In order to probe deeper into the practicality and effectiveness of creative treason used in the process of translation, this thesis interprets the creative treason in theEnglish version of Red Sorghum by Goldblatt in detail by case study. The analysiscontains such three levels as linguistic level, cultural level and textual level. Atlinguistic level, the author makes contrastive analysis of the selected colloquialexpressions and rhetorical device accordingly in both the original text and thetranslation text. Then at cultural level, specific historical periods, images of religiousculture and regional culture are all analyzed carefully by the author with examples inthe text. Finally at textual level, the author’s analysis is aimed at the omission ofcomplex descriptions and sensitive content as well as the adjustment of paragraphstructure in the translation text. Based on the case study, the author gives objectiveevaluation of the values and defects of creative treason and points out theenlightenment of it for translators and readers.Based on case study, this thesis testifies the feasibility and significance ofcreative treason through combining its translation thought with the theory ofsociosemiotics. The author sincerely hopes that creative treason can be more widelyaccepted and fully adopted by Chinese translators and the research on creative treasoncan solve the problem of straight and inflexible translation to some extent in literaturetranslation today, so as to make some contribution to the over-sea propagation ofChinese literature.