A Study Of The English Translation Of Big Breasts And Wide Hips From The Perspective Of Manipulation Theory

“Chinese culture going out”,an important national cultural strategy of China,has been pushing Chinese literature to be a role on the stage of world-wide literature.The translation of Chinese literature into other languages is one of the vital loops to popularize Chinese literature among foreign readers.Mo Yan is the first Chinese novelist who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2012.His award was made possible through the efforts of Howard Goldblatt,whose successful translation helped Mo Yan achieved this honor.In recent years Chinese researchers have showed great interest in Mo Yan's works and Howard Goldblatt's translation ideas.The reason for this is that the former is the most popular Chinese writer for western readers,while the latter is the foremost Chinese-English translator.Literature reviews showed few researches integrating Mo's creative writing with Golddblatt's skillful translation.This dissertation tries to analyze one specific Goldblatt's translation,Big Breasts and Wide Hips,from the respective of manipulation theory to illustrate how his translation manipulated by different factors,why his translation be successful and to offer certain practical translation reference for other translators.According to André Lefevere,translation is a rewriting or manipulation of an original text and all rewritings are influenced by certain ideology,poetics and patronage.The results of this paper proves the coincidence between Goldblatt's practice and Lefevere's theory.It shows Goldblatt's translation of Big Breasts and Wide Hips can be interpreted as a rewriting of Mo's original text which was successfully transplanted into target countries literature system.By comparing the original work with the translation version,this paper finds that the main manipulation factors of ideology are the complex political environment and the wide culture gap.As for poetics manipulation,the manipulation factors majorly focus on the picture depicting and rewriting of culture-loaded words,and the patronage manipulation in this novel focus on the omission of local religious belief and the integration degree of folk-customs.Taking these factors into consideration,Goldblatt adopted effective translation skills to deal with translation problems,that is,combining omission and literal translation together to rewrite the original work.On the other hand,because of certain misunderstanding of original text,certain Goldblatt's rewriting are unfaithful,or even incorrect to the original text.Such kind of mistakes occurs when dealing with poetics issues.Finally,even(although there are)some mistakes exist,it is agreed that this novel is a successful translation work.The accurate control of ideology and patronage not only enhanced Chinese novel's acceptation level in western countries but also provided a valuable reference for the subsequent translators who would like to translate Mo Yan's novels.As for these unfaithful and incorrect translation from poetics aspect,they can be regarded as negative examples for other translators to avoid.