Study On Mistranslation In Life And Death Are Wearing Me Out From The Perspective Of Philosophical Hermeneutics

Mistranslation is inevitable. Honored as the “lonely province” of contemporary Chinese literature, Howard Goldblatt translated Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out, a novel written by Mo Yan, in which a lot of mistranslation has been found. The views of philosophical hermeneutics held by Gadamer like “historicity of understanding”,“fusion of horizon” and “prejudice” can be applied to explain mistranslation phenomenon in literary works.Based on the previous researches, this paper stated the causes of mistranslation from the perspective of philosophical hermeneutics and illustrated the enlightenment of the theory on translation. Then under the guidance of philosophical hermeneutics the paper analyzed mistranslation cases in Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out from unconscious mistranslation and conscious mistranslation respectively. Unconscious mistranslation covered culture-loaded words, weights and measures, dialogues between characters etc; conscious mistranslation included idioms, regional language, religious expressions, folk songs, omission, amplification and so on.The author found that some mistranslation was caused by the translator's carelessness and his deficiency of knowledge, while some mistranslation was the translator's painstaking creation. By analyzing mistranslation cases in Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out, the author expects to provide some reference to the translation of literary works so that Chinese literature can “go out” better.