On The Application Of Carnivalesque In Hong Gao Liang Jia Zu And Its Reproduction In The Translation By Howard Goldblatt

Hong Gao Liang Jia Zu is one of the early works of the Nobel Literature Prize winner---Mo Yan, and one of his most representative works. The stories in this novel happened during the war-torn years of his hometown---Northeast Gaomi Township, where seas of wile red sorghum covered the land, and a group of robust people thrived. Heroic figures are commonly seen in Chinese literature, but in this novel, the war and love in this piece of land is depicted in a way that is unique to Mo Yan. There’s no grandiose eulogy, or exaggerating lecturing. Mo Yan immersed himself in the ordinary people at that time and portrayed this chapter of history.Traces of Carnivalesque or Carnivalization are quite discernible in this novel. The theory originated from carnival festivities. Some aspects of those festivities became integrated in literature works. The Russian philosopher, literary critic, semiotician M. M. Bakhtin summarized the features of carnival festivities and put forward the concept of “Carnivalesque”. To him, carnival is for everyone, it’s reversive and Utopian. The Carnivalized literature also has its distinct features in their language, humor, grotesque images and dialogues. Hong Gao Liang Jia Zu fits in all these aspects.The worldwide success of the novel can be attributed to a certain degree to the translation by Howard Goldblatt. In Red Sorghum, Goldblatt maintains most of these features, which is a valuable experiment when we are trying to introduce Chinese literature to the rest of the world. However, some other approaches, such as maintaining the images while making the language hard to understand, changing the narration structure, or deleting important parts of the novel, need to be improved.This thesis will use descriptive method to examine how Carnivalesque is applied in the novel Hong Gao Liang Jia Zu and how the translation by Howard Goldblatt reproduced Carnivalesque in his version. Analyze found that the translation is both with merits and deviances. The author believes that maintaining traces of Carnivalesque is a valuable approach while a balance should still be struck between maintaining the traces and keeping the language comprehensible. Based on the study of intertexuality, works by English writers with similar traces of Carnivalesque can be of value in the process of translation.