A Study On The English Version Of Honggaoliang Jiazu From The Perspective Of Eco-translatology

In 2012,the famous Chinese contemporary writer Mo Yan obtained the laureate of Nobel Prize in Literature,which greatly boosts the confidence of disseminating Chinese literature around the world.While it also gives rise to the deep thinking among domestic academic field with regard to successful dissemination of Chinese literature abroad.In recent years,abundant related researches have been conducted mostly from the perspective of Sociology,Skopos theory,etc.Actually,however,they were carried out at a microcosmic level and few of them focused on the entire translation process.By comparison,Chinese scholar Hu Gengshen's unprecedent Eco-Translatology provides a broader new angle for literature translation research.Eco-Translatology promotes “translator-centeredness”,and regards translation as translators' multi-dimensional adaptations and selections in the translational eco-environment,which contains the source text,writer,target reader,publisher and so on so forth.Taking Eco-Translatology as the theoretical framework,this present study selects 76 typical pairs of examples from Mo Yan's masterpiece Honggaoliang Jiazu and its English version Red Sorghum(translated by American sinologist Howard Goldblatt)as the research subjects.Through such a case study,it is expected to demonstrate Howard Goldblatt's translation characteristics to some extent so as to shed some light on the current Chinese literature translation and “Chinese literature going out” project.The author primarily explored the source language system and target language system presented in the translational eco-environment of Honggaoliang Jiazu,then elaborated Howard Goldblatt's selective adaptations in such a translational eco-environment from translation competence and personal interest aspects.Subsequently,the author probed into Howard Goldblatt's adaptive selections in translational eco-environment from linguistic dimension,cultural dimension and communicative dimension by means of text analysis,case study,descriptive and explanatory method,etc.Finally,the degree of holistic adaptation and selection of Red Sorghum was analyzed according to the translation evaluation criterion of Eco-Translatology,namely the degree of multi-dimensional transformations,reader's feedback and translator's quality.The major findings are displayed as the following three points:(1)the translational eco-environment presented in the source language system mainly involves the original writer,source text and its writing styles as well as linguistic features,and the translational eco-environment presented in the target language system mainly contains the cultural traditions of western countries,target readers' preferences and interests as well as the overseas book-publishing market.(2)Howard Goldblatt thoroughly adapts to the translational eco-environment of Honggaoliang Jiazu relying on his superb translation competence and extreme enthusiasm on Chinese contemporary literature.(3)He takes disseminating Chinese culture as original motivation and follows the principle of “reader-centeredness” in his translation.Through flexiblely selecting different translation strategies and various translation methods and techniques,Howard Goldblatt makes transformations from linguistic dimension,culture dimension and communicative dimension.The English version of Honggaoliang Jiazu retains most of linguistic and cultural characteristics of source text,meanwhile,it well caters to target readers' preferences and market needs,which makes the English version achieve the highest degree of holistic adaptation and selection.Based on the above research findings,the author provides some suggestions for the current Chinese literature translation from four aspects,namely,selection of source text,adaptation to the translational eco-environment,“three-dimensional” adaptive selections as well as government guidance.This present research proves the feasibility of Eco-Translatology in analyzing the English version of Honggaoliang Jiazu.It is not only a convincing supplement to previous application studies of Eco-Translatology,but also a promising exploration on Chinese literature translation research.