A Study Of Howard Goldblatt's Translation Of Proverbs Based On The Translator Behavior Criticism

After Mo Yan won the Nobel Prize in 2012,the studies about Howard Goldblatt and local literature gradually became a hot academic topic,and proverbs,as a crucial part of Chinese local literature,play a significant role in the development of local literature.There are enormous proverbs in Mo Yan's works,and the translator Howard Goldblatt's translation and his translation behaviors,as the examples for proverbs translation,are worthy of studying and emulating for Chinese literature and Chinese culture "going out".With the help of Professor Zhou Lingshun'Translator Behavior Criticism theory and the small proverbs corpus of ten books of Mo Yan and Howard Goldblatt,this thesis makes a comprehensive and objective research on Howard Goldblatt's translation and his translation behaviors from intra-translation and extra-translation two distinct perspectives,through which this thesis aims to provide a new critical perspective for proverbs translation studies and to seek executable solutions for Chinese literature and Chinese culture "going out".Through analysis,this thesis draws the following conclusions:first,there are 132 proverbs in ten books of Mo Yan,and these colloquial and vulgar proverbs concern with people's life,environment and society with characters of the graceful metre,diverse rhythm,compact structure as well as various of rhetorical devices.Meanwhile,as a linguistic being,Howard Goldblatt doesn't notice the proverbs'language styles,thus he chooses the formal words to replace the local words that with ethnic characteristics or uses the spoken words to translate the formal words;in terms of syntactic structure and rhetoric aspects,though Howard Goldblatt fails to keep correspondence with original text in every place,his creative translation is widely accepted by readers;and Howard Goldblatt only translates parts of the exclamation marks and the question marks of original text,which weakens the figures' mood;according to the real situation,he takes the flexible translation methods:the combination of literal translation and free translation,literal translation,free translation as well as omission.Furthermore,as a social being,Howard Goldblatt's translation behaviors are influenced by many factors,such as the original content,the author,the editors and publishing house,the readers,the translator himself and the ideologies and motivations.Whether the original language is local or not,whether he can translate or not and whether the original content attract him or not,these factors influence directly his choice of the original text;meanwhile Mo Yan gives Howard Goldblatt lots of freedoms to modify his works;considering the target readers,the editors and the publishing house will suggest Howard Goldblatt delete and modify some chapters;the education experiences contribute to his solid language foundation,which makes him understand the original text well;although emphasizing the faithfulness,Howard Goldblatt will make some appropriate deletions and modifications to cater for the readers' acceptance.The thesis consists of five chapters:Chapter one introduces the research background,the research significance,the research questions as well as the structure of this thesis.Chapter two serves as the literature review,firstly it introduces the previous studies on proverbs both at home and abroad,then it reviews the related studies on Howard Goldblatt both at home and abroad.Chapter three is the theories basis,and it firstly introduces Professor Zhou Lingshun' Translator Behavior Criticism theory,then the meaning of "Truth-seeking" and "Utility-attaining" as well as the relationship between them are presented,finally it introduces the Intra-translation and Extra-translation theories.Chapter four and Chapter five are the main bodies of this thesis,this thesis makes a comprehensive analysis of Howard Goldblatt's translation and his translation behaviors from intra-translation perspective and extra-translation perspective.Chapter six is regarded as the conclusion,and the main findings,limitations of the thesis as well as some implications and suggestions are displayed.