A Study On Howard Goldblatt's Rewriting

Howard Goldblatt,a famous American Sinologist,is almost universally hailed as the leading English-language translator of contemporary Chinese literature.However,his translation has always been controversial in the academic circles for his way of rewriting in translation.In order to present a true picture of Howard Goldblatt's rewriting,this study,with the manipulation theory as its theoretical basis and the translation of Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out as the sources of case studies,focuses on the rewriting in his translation and examines the manipulation exerted by ideology and poetics on literary translation.Accordingly,the study finds out that the translator's and patronage's ideology,along with the poetics dominant in the receiving literature,contribute to the selection of the original text,which,in our instance,is the most conspicuous type of rewriting;in the translation,Howard Goldblatt does often rewrite the work,partly manipulated by the comprehensive ideology of the target culture and partly by the comprehensive poetics of the receiving literary system;both types of rewriting are intentional,and its most obvious intention is to ensure the acceptance of the translated work by broader readers in the target-culture,thereby extending the life of the work in a foreign environment.Our analysis on the translation samples also indicates that,as an experienced translator from the receiving literary system,Howard Goldblatt,highly conscious of the dominant ideology and poetics,actually exploits their influence through the translator himself and has them participate in the entire process of work selection and translation.Finally,the thesis argues that Howard Goldblatt's rewriting is the key to his success,a kind of rewriting quite in keeping with the law of literary development and the rule of literary communication.