Translation Strategies Of Culture-Loaded Words In Big Breasts & Wide Hips

As China’s first winner of Noble Prize for literature, Mo Y an and his works attracted great attention from home and abroad. However, except for Mo Yan’s ardent and shocking stories, the tran slated versions of his works, in particular the English version by Howard Goldblatt contributes a lot. To large extent, it is tho se translated versions, especially Howard Goldblatt’s English version that makes Mo Yan’s works popular and finally recognized by western readers. Therefore it is necessary and meaningful to study Goldblatt’ s English versions and find out the funda mental reasons which m ake Mo Yan’s works a real hit. The finding of this research shall enlighten the future English translators of Chinese lite rature works. Among all Mo Yan’s works, Big Breasts & Wide Hips(B&W) stands out as Mo Y an’s longest ever and one of Mo Yan’s most marvelous novels. Mo once said that he had put the m ost efforts into B&W and anyone who was interested in his works should definitely start with this one. This thesis quantitatively analyzed the strategies used by Goldblatt in translating culture-loaded words in B&W from the perspective of cultural translation theory. It was found that am ong the 815 culture-loaded words in Big Breasts & Wide Hips, Howard Goldblatt translated 338 of them with foreignization(41.5%) and another 449 with dom estication(55.1%). From this sta tistics, it is n oticed that the percentage rates of forei gnization and dom estication are quite close, indicating foreignization strategy is m ore acceptable and recognized among western readers. This can be attributed to the deeper and broader cultural exchange between growing China and the rest of the world in the c ontext of globalization. In conclusion, in the future English tran slation of Chinese liter ature works, the perce ntage rate of foreignization may be enhanced. T ake Howard Goldblatt’s English version of Big Breasts & Wide Hips as an example, he tend s to use foreignization in trans lating names of people and places. While in trans lating two-part alle gorical sayings and idioms, he tends to use dom estication. This could be useful reference in future English-translaiton of Chinese literature works.