A Study Of Howard Goldblatt’s Translation Of Big Breasts & Wide Hips From Translator’s Subjectivity

This thesis takes both the initiative and passivity into consideration which are the most two important factors of translator’s subjectivity, to explore the core connotations of translator’s subjectivity in a dialectical way. It will take the novel Big Breasts and Wide Hips[2], written by Mo Yan and translated by Howard Goldblatt, as the study object, to make out the manifestations of translator’s subjectivity through analyzing, comparing and contrasting the original text and its English version.Through investigation, the author has found that the English version of Big Breasts and Wide Hips is actually the combination of Howard Goldblatt’s subjective initiative and passivity, i.e., the product of translator’s subjectivity. On the one hand, he has displayed his initiative on the lexical, sentential and textual level; on the other hand, he has also embodied translator’s passivity during the translating process due to the limitation of his language competence, cultural difference and ideology.In the translating process, Goldblatt has greatly performed his subjectivity to introduce Chinese culture vividly, and meet western readers’ interest in exotic cultures and reading habits at the same time. As for the translation strategy, he has used the methods of literal translation and transliteration with explanation to maintain the image and cultural elements of the original text. What’s more, he also adapts the obscure content in the original text according to target readers’ aesthetic habits and thinking modes to ease their understanding burden on his own initiative. However, Goldblatt also has a few mistranslations resulted from the constraints of language competence, cultural difference and ideology, which are inevitable results of translator’s passivity and do not have much bad influence on the translation.This thesis has explored the manifestations of translator’s subjectivity in the English version of Big Breasts and Wide Hips, as well as its influence on the translation, which has great theoretical and practical inspirations for the research on translation studies. Theoretically speaking, in the translation process, translators should take translator’s subjectivity into consideration and not just focus on the author and the original text. Moreover, subjective initiative and passivity are two seemingly opposite but actually interrelated components of translator’s subjectivity, none of which can be neglected or exaggerated in the translating process. Practically speaking, the translation methods adopted by Goldblatt can provide some suggestions on and references for translating contemporary Chinese novels, and the passivity embodied also gives reflections to the translators to explore new creative methods in translation to implement their subjectivity appropriately, thus to promote the communication between Chinese and western culture.