A Study On The English Translation Of Feng Ru Fei Tun In Light Of Chesterman’s Models Of Translation Ethics

The issue of “how to translate” is closely related to the issue of translation ethics and has long been discussed in the circle of translation studies. However, contemporary discussion of the issue did not begin until the 1980 s. In 1984, it was Antoine Berman who first put forward the concept of “ethics of translation”. Soon afterwards, translation theorists such as Pym and Venuti proposed various views on translation ethics. Among different views on translation ethics, Andrew Chesterman’s approach is quite appealing as he holds that there are five models of translation ethics(namely, ethics of representation, ethics of service, ethics of communication, norm-based ethics and ethics of commitment). Andrew Chesterman divides those five models into two levels, namely micro-ethical level and macro-ethical level. He then systematically interprets the concrete ethical requirements and his approach has exerted far-reaching influence in academia.As one of the representative works of Mo Yan, Feng Ru Fei Tun(Big Breasts and Wide Hips) has won the first Red River Prize for Literature in 1996. As the English translator of Mo Yan’s novels, Goldblatt has made great contribution to the acceptance of Mo Yan’s works overseas and Mo Yan’s winning of the Nobel Prize for Literature. A lot of scholars have studied Goldblatt’s translation of Feng Ru Fei Tun under the direction of different translation theories. However, domestic studies on translation ethics are still at beginning. Few of them took translation ethics theory as their theoretical basis.In light of Chesterman’s five translation ethics models, this thesis tries to research Goldblatt’s translation of Feng Ru Fei Tun. Through her detailed analysis, the author finds that all these five models of translation ethics are embodied in the English version of Feng Ru Fei Tun. Moreover, to make his translation conformable to the representation ethics, foreignization translation strategy is adopted with various methods such as transliteration, literal translation, transliteration plus internal paraphrase, literal translation plus internal paraphrase. To make his translation conformable to the ethics of service, ethics of communication and norm-based ethics, domestication strategy is adopted and methods such as free translation, free translation plus internal paraphrase, omitting, adapting are used. To make his translation conformable to the ethics of commitment, the method of rewriting is mainly adopted. The thesis is imperfect. But the author hopes that it has guiding significance for the study of English translation of Feng Ru Fei Tun.