An Analysis On Mistranslation In Howard Goldblatt's Translated Version Life And Death Are Wearing Me Out

The Chinese writer Mo Yan won the Nobel Prize in 2012.Thanks to the consistent and persistent hard working of his translators from different countries,Mo Yan has made a breakthrough for Chinese literature.Howard Goldblatt,as the prominent American sinologist and Mo Yan's only translator for English-speaking countries,devotes himself to translate Chinese novels.His years of perseverance on translating and publishing Chinese literature have built the overseas market for Chinese literature and introduced the Chinese contemporary novels to the whole world.Many Chinese scholars not only see Howard Goldblatt as the most leading figure of the western sinologists,but also give high appraise to his translation works.He,who is esteemed as “the premier translator of Chinese modern and contemporary literature”,has been conducive to generalizing Chinese literature.Nevertheless,some improper even inaccurate translation phenomena can always be found after a perusal of Howard Goldblatt's renderings.It is a truth universally acknowledged that the translated text should approach to the original one as closely as possible.Although the discussion of translation fidelity has been heating for years,the perfect and flawless translation is impossible to exist.The conversion of two different languages is involved in the translation process,as well as the impact of two different cultures.The unavoidable cultural differentia makes mistranslation inevitable.This thesis is a research on the mistranslation in Howard Goldblatt's translation.By analyzing his translated version Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out,the author attempts to explore classifications and causes of these mistranslation phenomena.On classification,the thesis will draw on the experience of Professor Xie Tianzhen's method which has been mentioned in his treatise Medio-Translatology and ameliorate it.In general,the author classifies the mistranslation phenomena in Howard Goldblatt's translated version Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out into 2 categories,namely,the mistranslation at vocabulary level and mistranslation at clause level.When inquiring into the causes,3 translation theories will be applied in this thesis,which involves Nida and his sociosemiotics,Yan Fu's “faithfulness,expressiveness and elegance”,as well as Gutt's relevance theory respectively.This research has a tremendous realistic meaning.Very few researchers focus on the issue of mistranslation and most papers only extend to the discussion of cultural misunderstanding.Some literary essayists' bias is to praise the achievement of translators rather than correcting them.Through a thoroughly analysis and exploration of the mistranslations in Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out,this thesis not only gives a equitable judgment to Mr.Howard Goldblatt,but also aims at reminding other researchers of envisaging mistranslation phenomena.Also,the author encourages the translators' introspection in order to reduce homologous mistakes during translation process.In the meantime,this thesis appeals to evaluate translators and their works from a critical point of view.