Howard Goldblatt's English Translation Of Red Sorghum From The Perspective Of Imagology

Mo Yan is the first Chinese Nobel Prize winner and his masterpiece Hong Gao Liang Jia Zu,reflects the strong vitality and brave national spirit of people in Gaomi county during the anti-Japanese war.Though many scholars at home and abroad have conducted researches on the English versions of Hong Gao Liang Jia Zu by Howard Goldblatt,there are few studies from the perspective of imagology theory.Therefore,this thesis aims to broaden the research in this respect and explore proper translation strategies of literary translation.As an important part of cross-culture research,imagology,a branch of comparative literature,focuses on the study of images of an exotic land in literary works and explores the social and cultural context underlying such images.In translation process,the translator replaces the author of the original work,serving as “self”,who will inspect,depict and recreate images of the original work from his angle.For the translator,the image in the original work is the image of “other”.This thesis attempts to analyze the reasons that contribute to the variation of the exotic images recreated by the translator.Based on the research approaches of the imagology,this paper will conduct a study of Howard Goldblatt?s translated version from intrinsic textual aspects which include lexicons level,hierarchical relation level and plot level and extrinsic textual aspects which are translator?s imaginaire social,source of information and translator?s emotion,imagination and attitudes toward the exotic land.At the lexicon level,the translator generally adopts methods of literal translation,transliteration and free translation to transmit images.For transmission of images at the hierarchical relation level,the translator amplifies the hierarchical relation of the original work to reconstruct images by interpreting the political words into euphemisms.At the plot level,the translator re-creates images by means of deletion and adaption of some paragraphs to reconstruct the plot.In the process of images transmission,the translator is affected by factors such as his imaginaire social,source of information and translator?s emotion,imagination and attitudes toward the exotic land.It is concluded that the imagology theory is proved to be feasible in providing guidance to literary translation,which will speed up the development of the Chinese literature,and contribute to the communication between the West and China.