A Case Study Of Howard Goldblatt’s Chinese Literary Translation From The Perspective Of Creative Treason

Because of the existence of linguistic and cultural differences between nations, two different language users will inevitably encounter the loss, addition or distortion of the original information during the process of mutual communication. The famous French literary sociologist Robert Escarpit made the point that translation is always some kind of creative treason. Professor Xie Tianzhen holds the view that it uncovers the essence of translation,especially literary translation. Creative treason affirms the subjective initiatives of translators,i.e. creatively overcoming the obstacles existing in translation on the premise of reproducing the value of the original work and realizing "faithfulness" of higher level eventually.As the chief translator of modern and contemporary Chinese literature, Howard Goldblatt always attaches great significance to the linguistic and cultural differences and acceptability of the target readers, and has insight into the nature of "faithful re-creation" of translation.This thesis attempts to probe into the faithful re-creation in Howard Goldblatt’s Chinese literary translation from the perspective of creative treason, taking the English version of Mo Yan’s novel Shifu, You’ll Do Anything for a Laugh translated by Howard Goldblatt as a case study. Based on the discussion of the types and causes of creative treason, it will make a research on "faithfulness" and "treason" in Goldblatt’s translation from three levels: linguistic,textual and cultural, taking examples from his English version mentioned above as analyzing subject.