On Translator-Centeredness In Eco-Translatology

Since its first appearance in April 2004, Jiang Rong’s Lang Tuteng has successfully created public sensation for grassland wolf and topped the list of Chinese bestseller for sixteen consecutive months with its unique narrative style, up-to-date theme of environmental protection and enchanting plots. The triumph of Lang Tuteng has attracted great attention from the foreign publishers. So far, Lang Tuteng has been translated into more than thirty languages and published in many countries and regions all over the world, almost covering all the mainstream languages. Among them, the English version of Lang Tuteng has been acquired by Penguin Books and translated by famous sinologist and translator Howard Goldblatt. In 2008, Wolf Totem, the English version of Lang Tuteng, has made its first appearance with good reflections and comments from readers and various mainstream media, among which are The Guardian of UK and National Geographic Traveler in USA. Wolf Totem also won the first Man Asian Literary Prize in the Man Hong Kong International Literary Festival.However, at present there are relatively few researches on this successful version in translation field. Among them, some excellent researches have compared Chinese and English version from micro aspects based on traditional theories, for instance Skopos theory. The author found that Howard Goldblatt has made many initiative and conscious adjustments which cause great differences between English and Chinese version. In this case, research on Wolf Totem from the macroscopic view is of necessity.This thesis starts from the view of Eco-translatology, stresses the importance of the representations of translator-centeredness in Howard Goldblatt’s Wolf Totem, aims to explain how the translator, known as the core of whole translation activity, adapts and selects in specific translational eco-environment. After a series of relative researches, the author has introduced the importance of translator-centeredness, translator’s instinctive adaptation and selection, adaptive mechanism and restrictive mechanism, principles, methods and evaluation by the systematic and logical research on Wolf Totem. In the meantime, the author hopes to bring useful enlightenment for the future Chinese literature translation to step on the world stage and provides effective evidence for the explanation of new emerging theory of Eco-translatology. The orientation of culture study prevailed in the 1970s. At that time, the subjectivity of translation became the new subject of Western translation studies. In 2004, Professor Hu Gengshen published his book An Approach to Translation as Adaptation and Selection in 2004 and gradually developed it into Eco-translatology in later years. In 2010, Professor Hu Gengshen made systematic explanation and statement about the new theory on the First International Symposium on Eco-translatology, which made Eco-translatology the first original theory outside Europe. It is Professor Hu Gengshen who puts forward the concept of translator-centeredness which pushes the study of translator subjectivity to a new height and truly manifests the central place and function of translator in translating process.In the end of the research, the author comes to final conclusions. The concept of translator-centeredness assures the central place of the translator, making the translator the real dominator of the whole translating process, hence leads the whole activity rightly and properly. In other words, translated version is the production of the translator’s adaptation and selection in translational eco-environment.The presentation of translator-centeredness provides a brand-new and all-sided view for translation studies. This thesis is a supplement for the studies on Howard Goldblatt’s Wolf Totem, as well as the explanation and statement of translator-centeredness in Eco-translatology with Wolf Totem as a case study.