Social Filter Theoretical Perspective On Howard Goldblatt’s Translation Of The Field Of Life And Death

Since translation is an intercultural communication, and each culture carries with itself unique characteristics, the equalent translation between different cultures is surely impossible. When the culture embodied in one language is translated into another, it will inevitably undergo some losses. Though the loss of culture in translation has long be awared and studied,most of such studies have limited their theoretical perspectives to linguistic theories and focused merely on language. It was not until 1970s,when the polysystem theory was proposed, translation started to walk out of the realm of linguistics and its inter-disciplinary nature began to become prominent. From then on,scholars all over the world expanded their studies from different perspectives to seek theoretical support for translation study. Among those perspectives, the philosophical ones have attracted abandant attention due to their remarkable guiding founction on translation.Given the fact that translation is a social activity and is restricted by various social factors, translation studies can’t be completed without regard to the social filter. Though the combination of philosophy and translation enjoys a long history,the adoption of the social filter theory for translation study is rare and lacks of depth. This thesis takes Fromm’s social filter theory as its theoretical perspective to study the culture filteration in the English version of The Field of Life and Death, hoping that it will be of some help to broaden the theoretical horizon for translation studies and will do good to deepening people’s awareness of the social property of translation.The social filter is a filtering mechanism put forward by Erich Fromm in his attempt to explain how social unconsciousness occurs. According to Fromm, it is this mechanism that stands between experience and consciousness,forbidding certain experience to enter into the realm of consciousness. As translation always occurs in a certain social environment and is undoubtedly restricted by some social factors, so adopting the social filter theory for translation study is of high rationality and conforms to the social property of translation. Such application is made to the English version of Shengsichang, Hisao Hung’s first novel that brought her great fame. The novel tells life stories about a group of peasants living in a small village near Harbin right before the Japanese invasion of Manchuria. The unique language style and cultural elements in the source text make the novel a paradigm of North-East China folk literature but at the same time, pose great challenges to translators. Howard Goldblatt stated in the Introduction of The Field of Life and Death that he had to make some changes and delections to the source text to make the translation readable and acceptable by target readers. So it is safe to conclude that when translating literature filled with local flavor and unique language styles, even an excellent translator as capable as Howard Goldblatt can’t extricate himself from the restriction of the social filter. Though the English version of The Field of Life and Death is not faithful to the source text to some extent when considered strictly, it has enjoyed a high popularity ever since it was published in 1979, which proves that it is approvable to the target language society in both language and content,and thus a careful study of the translated version can certainly bring us valuable experience that is worthy of learning. It is for this reason and the insufficient study on it that this MA thesis is composed.This thesis takes the English version of Hisao Hung’s novel, Shengsichang, as a case study. By comparing the source text and the target text carefully and referring to the previous studies on Howard Goldblatt as well as his translation thoughts, the author has found that when dealing with language and logic in the source text,Howard Goldblatt adopted domestication as main strategy with foreignization founctioning as a walking stick, but when it comes to the translation of social taboos, only domestication or substitution was adopted. It is concluded that social filtering does exist in translation and translation strategies should be selected flexibly in accordance with the power manifested by different components of the social filter in the target language society. In addition,since 2017 is the 75th anniversary of Hisao Hung’s death, this thesis can not only be deemed as a supplement for studies on Howard Goldblatt and his translation,but can also be regarded as a way to honor the talented woman writer, Hisao Hung.