On Goldblatt’s Translating Of Shengsi Pilao—— From The Perspective Of The Approach To Translation As Adaptation And Selection

As one of the most influential Chinese contemporary writers, Mo Yan has won a series of significant literature prizes at home and abroad, whose works have been translated into many different languages for foreign readers. Most remarkably, Mo Yan became the first Chinese award-winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2012.From the perspective of translation studies, the translations of his works are relatively successful, so that it is greatly important to study those translations. As a famous American translator and sinologist, Howard Goldblatt is one of the distinguished translators now in Chinese contemporary literature. His translations have not been given much attention by Chinese scholars until the last several years. Among all factors which have contributed a lot to Mo Yan’s award, Goldblatt’s translation is a significant one. For these reasons, this thesis focuses its study object on Goldblatt’s translation process of the English version Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out of Mo Yan’s Shengsi Pilao.After the “cultural turn”, there are more and more scholars over the world who have acknowledged that translator’s adaptation and selection to some extent are two subconscious behaviors of translators when doing translation. Inspired by the basic principles and thoughts of Darwin’s “natural selection” and “survival the fittest”,Professor Hu Gengshen published his An Approach to Translation as Adaptation and Selection with the translation concept “translator-centeredness”. With the definition“as a translator’s adaption and selection activities in a translational eco-environment”to translation(Hu Gengshen An Approach 219), Hu Gengshen systematically illustrated the philosophical origin, translation process, translation principles and criteria, and translation methods of the translation theory.According to the theory, the whole translation process is divided into two stages.The first refers to the translator’s selective adaptation including the various needs, the efficient competences and the complex translational eco-environment. The second refers to the translator’s adaptive selection mainly requiring the selective transformation from linguistic, cultural and communicative dimensions. This thesisendeavors to analyze Goldblatt’s whole translation process of Shengsi Pilao from the perspective of the approach to TAS(translation as adaptation and selection) 1. The study focuses on two aspects: firstly, how he adapted to himself and the translational eco-environment; secondly, how he selected the target text by making proper transformations between the source and target languages to demonstrate his“translator-centeredness” and implement the effective cultural transmission.It reaches the conclusions that the theory of TAS is feasible and Howard Goldblatt’s translation to Shengsi Pilao has implemented the substantial cultural transmission. Translation is not a simple activity to transform between different languages, however. To reach the purpose of translation and make the translation effective, the translator is required to adapt to himself and the translational eco-environment, which consists of all the elements related to the source and target languages, and then to select the target text by multi-dimensional transformations.Applying TAS to analyze the whole translation process of the successful literature translation of Shengsi Pilao, this thesis is significant to future translation activities with enlightenment.