The Study Of Translator’s Subjectivity From The Perspective Of Eco-Translatology

Mo Yan’s novels have been gaining their popularity in the West. In 2012, Mo became the first Chinese to win Nobel Prize in Literature, which started to attract attention to Howard Goldblatt, the translator of all Mo’s works in English, who had already contributed a lot to the modern and contemporary Chinese literature. Being one of his qualified works, Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out deserves more studies; Eco-translatology is a local translation theory newly bred in China, growing at high speed in the last decade.The author tries to observe translator’s subjectivity under Eco-translatology with a case study. The case study actually explores how the translator adapts to his translational eco-environment and makes selections:(1) to what degree is his adaptation to be;(2) what kind of target text is to be the most equivalent in linguistic, cultural and communicative dimensions respectively. It is induced that factors in three dimensions are interrelated to and inseparable from each other; Eco-translatology is of explanatory power in text analysis; Goldblatt’s subjectivity is obvious in his translation, however it is restricted by the translational environment and requirement of eco-balance; Under Eco-translatology, Goldblatt’s Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out is of high quality.This paper falls into five chapters: Chapter One is an introduction to the background and significance of the thesis and the layout; Chapter Two involves literature reviews of studies of English translation of Shengsipilao, on theories of Eco-translatology and translator’s subjectivity as well as a summary; Chapter Three is the theoretical framework, which demonstrates the ontological ideas and key concepts of Eco-translatology as well as translator’s subjectivity from the perspective of the theory, and introduces the research questions and methods; Chapter Four is a case study composed of four parts: a brief introduction to the translator and source text, followed with three parts about Goldbatt’s subjectivity in the three dimensions respectively; Chapter Five contains major findings, limitations, and expectations for further studies.