Adaptation And Variation In Howard Goldblatt’s English Version Of Mo Yan’s Novels

Variability, negotiability and adaptability of language connect with each other tightly, however, they are respectively independent. The realization of adaptation cannot come true without the help of variability and negotiability. There are four research angles of adaptation: the first and the foremost one is contextual correlates of adaptability, the next task is structural objects of adaptability, dynamics of adaptability is the third angle of language investigation, and the last but not the least one is the salience of the adaptation process. Upon the perspective of variation, variation is defined as the dynamic process of language choices and it is the reflection of translation creativity. This thesis mainly states three aspects of adaptation by illustrating Howard Goldblatt’s version of Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out: phonological patterns, syntactical structure and social cultural elements. And omission, amplification and free variation are also analyzed in the thesis. Adaptation and variation cannot be separated from each other. In the course of language usage and translation research, adaptation aims at adapting to target culture and a large amount of readers while variation copes with the flexible language changes because of the differences among language, history, culture, and social elements in the adaptation process. The ultimate goal of adaptation and variation is presenting the original flavor of the source text as much as possible, meeting the reading expectation and pursuit of readers.Analyzing the whole text from the perspective of translation as adaptation variation theory, it can be found that the translation version can skillfully handle the relationship between faithfulness and betrayal. The translator follows the writer’s writing purpose by retaining Chinese cultural elements in the translation process. At the same time, the differences between China and western countries are taken into consideration by the translator, and there are differences in western country readers’ cognition, psychology, social context and reading habits. So the translator makes some variations to the original work to some extent, that is to say, readers’ reading requirements and reading expectations are adapted. Therefore, Goldblatt’s translation version realizes translation’s adaptation and variation successfully and achieves translation’s effect and expectation.