A Study On The Change Of Howard Goldblatt's Translation Subjectivities

The traditional translation theory is text-oriented,regarding "equivalence" and"loyalty" as the criterion to evaluate the translation quality.However,it neglects translator's subjectivity.In the 1970s,with the emerging of "cultural turn",translator's identity has gained more attention and its "invisible" status has been changed.And translator's subjectivity has become a topic invigorated in translation studies.As a representative for the contemporary Chinese literary translation,Sinologist Howard Goldblatt enjoys world fame with his unique translation style.Many scholars and translators rates him highly and some of them agreed that Goldblatt's translation is a vital factor to help make the Chinese writer Mo Yan a Nobel laureate in Literature and Chinese literature known by more and more people in the world.Goldblatt is regarded as a successful translator of Chinese literature translation.And his unique translation style is shown in his subjectivity in his translations.Thus,it is of necessity to study his subjectivity,which is of realistic significance for the going out of Chinese literature.While it is undeniable that the translator's subjectivity may change with time because of some subjective factors or objective factors.With the selection of Goldblatt's traslation of Turbulence and Ruined city as research subject,this thesis discusses Goldblatt's subjectivity in the two novels.Turbulence and Ruined City are two novels written by famous Chinese writer Jia Pingwa.The two novels were published at the end of 1980s and the beginning of 1990s.Goldblatt translated them respectively in 1991 and 2016,which are separated in time by 25 years.With the application of exemplification and comparative analysis and manipulation theory,this thesis analyzes Goldblatt's translation style and his selection of translation strategies which reflect his subjectivities in different times.The author discovers that the style of his translation of Turbulence is close to the characteristics of English language in his earlier years of translation.Thus,in Turbulence,Goldblatt mainly adopts domestication as his translation strategy and deletes or rewrites many parts of the original text.Moreover,there are many mistranslations.However,the living and study experience influenced his latter translation of Ruined City,and he tends to employ foreignization strategy and the translation style is closer to the style of source text and keeps many Chinese characteristics and cultural elements.And relevant mistranslations are declining compared to those in Turbulence.By analyzing the two translations,Turbulence and Ruined City,the author holds the idea that Goldblatt's subjectivity in the translation weakens because of some subjective and objective factors and his translation views change from the target-reader-oriented to the source-text-oriented style.This thesis intends to arouse the attention of scholars and translators to enhance the translation quality by putting translator's subjectivity into full use.Through comparing the translation style and strategies in Turbulence and Ruined City as well as analyzing the factos influencing the differences,it is hoped that this study may serve as a supplement to the study of Howard Goldblatt so as to deepen our understanding of translator's subjectivity and get inspiration and enlightment on the exercise of introducing and translating Chinese literature to the world.