A Study On The Translation Of Northeast Folklore In Tales Of Hulan River From The Perspective Of The Hermeneutic Motion

Written by Xiao Hong,the Chinese modern female writer,Hulanhe Zhuan mainly describes the local landscapes,customs and practices in Hulan County.The first five Chapters of it were translated into English by American sinologist Howard Goldblatt,and were published by Indiana University in 1979.Afterward,it was reissued with minor changes in Hong Kong in 1988 by Joint Publishes and received wide attention from American readers.There are a great many of descriptions of the northeast folklore such as local festivals,northeast ballads and nursery rhyme in this novel and that is also one of the reasons why the author chooses northeast folklore as an object of study and attempts to carry out a research on its translation.In 1970 s,American translation theorist Steiner associated the understanding concepts of hermeneutics with translation and proposed the four steps of hermeneutic motion: trust,aggression,incorporation and restitution in his important treatise After Babel: Aspects of Language and Translation,creating a new field of translation studies.On account of the importance of the northeast folklore and the particularity of its translation,under the guidance of the framework of Steiner's hermeneutic motion,this thesis mainly adopts qualitative research method such as document retrieval,text analysis and summarizing method to analyze the translation of northeast folklore in Tales of Hulan River and attempts to summarize some useful translation principles of northeast folklore.The subsequential two questions are raised in this thesis.First,how can the translation of northeast folklore in Tales of Hulan River be analyzed under the guidance of the hermeneutic motion theory? Second,what translation principles can be drawn from the translation of northeast folklore within the four stages of the hermeneutic motion?There are two major findings: first,the translator's trust in the northeast folklore is mainly manifested in his personal experience and preference,and his selection of the early translated text;due to the translator's belief and awareness of native language,aggression to some of the northeast folklore is inevitable;aggression and incorporation occur almost simultaneously and the translator incorporates what he brought back in terms of the form and meaning of the northeast folklore;in the last stage,compensation for some of the northeast folklore is necessary.Howard Goldblatt adopts some translation strategies and techniques such as amplification,literal translation and transliteration plus explanation to balance the source text and target text.Second,the translator mainly follows the principle of preservation of the exotic flavor,imitation of the original style and observance of the readability in translating the northeast folklore in Tales of Hulan River.He selectively preserves the exotic flavor of the northeast folklore and brings them to the target readers.Besides,he respects and imitates the original style of the source text to reproduce the northeast folklore.At the same time,he follows the principle of readability to let the target readers understand the whole text and gain the knowledge of the northeast folklore.Through the study of the translation of northeast folklore in Tales of Hulan River within the framework of the hermeneutic motion,the author hopes to expand the research perspective of its English version,aiming at providing useful references for the translation of folkloric novels.