An Exploration Into Howard Goldblatt's Version Of Gan Xiao Liu Ji From The Perspective Of Sociosemiotics

Gan Xiao Liu Ji as a reminiscence prose written by the famous Chinese female writer Yang Jiang records her daily life at carder school in Henan province during the Cultural Revolution.Since its first publication in Hong Kong in 1981,the book has gained great publicity both at home and abroad for the author displays her feelings in a moderate and thought-provoking way,which is of great literature value.In 1983,American translator Howard Goldblatt published his translation of this book:Six Chapters from My Life "Downder," which is considered as the most successful rendition.Until now,studies analyzing Goldblatt's English version can be divided into two aspects:(1)Through comparing Goldblatt's version with Chinese translator Zhang Chu's version,efforts are made into surveying the influence of translator's cultural identity upon translation.(2)Considering Goldblatt's version as the most successful rendition,the researchers tend to summarize Goldblatt's translation methods and strategies with the purpose of guiding the translation of Chinese literature and propagating China's literary works and culture.Even so,studies on Six Chapters from My Life "Downunder" are still very rare.Therefore,the author intends to analyze the difficulties Goldblatt encountered during the translation of Gan Xiao Liu Ji and corresponding compensation strategies he adopted in the light of sociosemiotics in this thesis.Sociosemiotics is a new discipline developed on the basis of semiotics.It argues that translation is a form of communication between signs of two different cultures and the interpretation of linguistic signs should be conducted under specific culture context.During the process of interpretation,source linguistic signs are decoded in accordance with specific context into different meanings and functions,which will then be re-encoded in the target language.The present study attempts to explore Goldblatt's version of Gan Xiao Liu Ji from the perspective of three meanings of linguistic signs,aiming to work out the main barriers which cause the loss of meaning and corresponding compensation strategies Goldblatt employed.The study mainly employs the qualitative method,inductive method,and literature researching method to study the losses of meaning during translation process and corresponding compensation strategies.The author hopes that more and more researches could be conducted on this topic for a better cultural dissemination in the future.The present thesis is composed of five parts,which is organized as follows:chapter one is the introduction of the research background,structure and methodology.The second chapter focuses on literature review,which mainly introduces the achievements and problems of the previous studies on Six Chapters from My Life "Downunder"and has a brief review about Goldblatt's translation thoughts and the development of sociosemiotics.Chapter three is theoretical framework,which elaborates on the sociosemiotic approach and the feasibility of applying it on the evaluation of the translation of Gan Xiao Liu Ji.Chapter four is case analyses,which conducts a comprehensive analysis of Goldblatt's version,and sorts out the main barriers caused the losses of designative,inter-linguistic and pragmatic meaning as well as the corresponding compensation strategies Goldblatt employed.Chapter Six is conclusion.In this chapter,the author makes a summary of what we have discussed and illustrates the major findings and limitations of this thesis.