A Study On The Translation Of Alien Sources In Tan Xiang Xing

Tan Xiang Xing, one of the masterpieces by Mo Yan, has actually attracted a large number of studies. On the contrary, the translation study on the novel is unduly rare. The main factor accounting for the imbalance is that the translation research has long been focused on ancient books and classical novels so that there is relatively little attention paid to contemporary novels. Therefore, this study applies the translation strategies proposed by He Yuanjian regarding the translation of the alien sources into the analysis of Sandalwood Death translated by Howard Goldblatt. First, four types of alien sources are identified, and a Chinese-English parallel database is built, then the translation strategies employed are analyzed in detail. This study is expected to contribute to the translation of the alien sources.Three major findings in this study are summarized as follows.(1) There are 323 alien sources in Tan Xiang Xing, including 238 sources concerning language, 20 concerning materials, 19 concerning religious and superstition and 46 concerning society.(2) Five translation strategies are explored regarding the translation of alien sources in Tan Xiang Xing, i.e. trans-coding, paraphrasing, substitution, deletion and synthesization, in which synthesization consists of trans-coding plus paraphrasing and trans-coding plus substitution. As many as 171 alien sources are trans-coded; 90 sources are paraphrased; 43 sources are substituted; 4 sources are deleted; and 15 sources are translated by synthesization.(3) The translation pattern used in the translation of alien sources in Tan Xiang Xing can be concluded: trans-coding > paraphrasing > substitution > synthesization > deletion.Through the analysis of the translation strategies, it can be concluded that in the whole process of translation, the translator actually not only attaches much emphasis on the cultural implication in the source text but also pays much attention to the target reader’s acceptability and readability of the target text.