A Study Of The English Version Of Big Breasts And Wide Hips Translated By Howard Goldblatt From The Perspective Of Rewriting Theory

Translation acts as an important way of spreading different cultures and the communications among different languages. Traditional translation focused on the equivalence in linguistic structure between the source text and the target text. The translator should transfer the content of the source text faithfully as well as the original writer’s intention. However, in 1980 s, translation studies experienced a new shift from linguistic level to one stressing on the cultural factors, which is the “cultural turn”. Meanwhile the manipulation school, whose founder is Andre Lefevere, stood out. Lefevere puts that translation is a rewriting of an original text. No matter what the intention of rewriting is, all rewritings reflect a certain ideology and a poetics as well as such manipulate literature to function in a given society in a certain extent. According to the rewriting theory of Lefevere, the process of translation is under controlled and influenced by three constraints-ideology, poetics and patronage.Mo Yan is the Chinese writer winning the Nobel Literature Prize. In his works, Mo Yan combines folktales, history and the contemporary history by Hallucinatory Realism. Big Breasts and Wide Hips is one of Mo Yan’s famous novels, the representative of his works as well as his favorite novels. Mo Yan once said that “You may not read my woks, but if you want to have a good knowledge of me, the best way is to read the Big Breast and Wide Hips.” The novel greatly praised the greatness and selflessness of the Mother and the significant meaning of life. The English version of the novel is translated by famous American Sinologist Goldblatt. Since its publication in American by Arcade, it has received great popularity by western readers and attracted the media’s attention. Goldblatt made great contributions to promote Mo Yan’s works into the western world. Therefore, it is of great significance and meaningful to make a deep study on the English version of Big Breast and Wide Hips translated by Goldblatt.The thesis makes a descriptive study. By comparing the source text of Big Breasts and Wide Hips and the translated version, we can arrive at the conclusion that though Goldblatt translated the works successfully and faithfully, there are still some rewritings. The process of Goldblatt’s translation is influenced by poetics and ideology, in which the translator adopted various translation strategies. The thesis has investigated how the two factors poetics and ideology exert influence on the translation and which translation strategies are adopted, which provides some instructions and advice for Chinese literature to be translated into the western world.