Field, Habitus And Translation Activity: A Bourdieusian Perspective Of Howard Goldblatt's Translation Tales Of Hulan River

Translation is a cross-cultural communicative activity, the social attribute of which cannot be ignored. In the late 1990 s, the translation academic circle in the western world began to draw on sociological theories in translation studies and treat translation as a social practice, exploring the functioning and role of translation in the social system. In the process, Pierre Bourdieu's sociological theories were mostly cited, which could contribute to breaking the opposition between objectivism and subjectivism and establishing a good theoretical framework for translation studies under the social context.The novel Hu Lan He Zhuan is one of the most outstanding and representative works of Hsiao Hung(1911-1942), a talented female writer in the republican period of China(mainly refer to the years between 1912 and 1949). It was once appraised by Mao Dun(1896-1981), a contemporary Chinese novelist, cultural critic and social activist, as “ a narrative poem, a colorful genre painting, a haunting poem.” The translated version Tales of Hulan River is the first translation that the renowned American translator Howard Goldblatt(1939-) engaged in due to his deep love for the source text. However, Goldblatt is at present rather more well-known for his translations of the works by contemporary Chinese writers such as Mo Yan( born in 1955, the first Chinese novelist to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2012) than his translation of Hu Lan He Zhuan, the studies on which are quite limited in spite of Goldblatt's good translation.This thesis, based on the notions of “field” and “habitus” in the Bourdieusian sociological theories, first analyzes the “field” factors that have influenced Howard Goldblatt's translation choice of Hu Lan He Zhuan in the early stage of his translation career, mainly the literary field and academic field around the 1970s; then it explores the “habitus” of the translator, such as his special appreciation and preference for Hsiao Hung and her works, which also affect Goldblatt's translation choice. Goldblatt's numerous researches have laid the good foundation for his translation of Hu Lan He Zhuan, therefore, he emphasizes more on the literary value when choosing the source text, and combines literal translation and paraphrasing as the main translation methods with an aim to represent the literariness of the source text by keeping faithful to the source text to the best. In addition, the thesis analyzes the habitus of the translator in a specific field, as an integral part of the translator's individual history and personal preference, literary understanding and appreciation as well as translation views, which have influenced the way Goldblatt deals with the literary style, the culture-loaded words, the Chinese classical poems and the textual structure.