An Eco-translatology Approach To The Translation Of Culture-loaded Words

Wa,one of the most representative works of the Nobel Prize Literature winner Mo Yan,is famous for its audacious novel style in China.Its English version,Frog,was translated by the distinguished Chinese-English translator Howard Goldblatt and has won wide recognition in western countries.Mo Yan once praised this English version as “if not by Howard Goldblatt,we cannot have such a perfect version...”(Mo Yan 2000).The preeminent translation of Frog,however,does not necessarily mean the absolute fidelity of source text but the interpretable text for the target text readers and adaption to the source text environment.Even Goldblatt himself admits that translation is a kind of treason and rewriting is inevitable in the translation process,which suggests that various translation strategies have been adopted in his translation to adapt the translation into the target text eco-environment.Culture-loaded words are representative parts in the translation.The present paper,therefore,aims to conduct a systematic study on Goldblatt's translation of culture-loaded words in Frog.On the macro level based on the eco-environment of source text and target text,this thesis concludes the main translation strategies of Frog;followed by the revisiting of Eugene Nida's categorization of cultures,the culture-loaded words in Frog have been divided into five types;from the perspective of Eco-translatology and taking selection and adaption as two standards and three-dimensional transformation model as the analysis tool,linguistic culture-loaded words and ecological culture-loaded words are analyzed from linguistic dimension;on cultural dimension,material,social and religious culture-loaded words are discussed and their translation strategies are concluded;on communicative dimension,the study focus is shifted to the attainment of communicative aims across source text and target text eco-environments.The major findings of the present research confirm the assumption that selection and adaption of culture-loaded words frequently occur in Goldblatt's translation,for the sake of the target readers' contemporary ideological patterns and poetic expectation.From the macro-level based on the eco-environment of the source text,the translation analysis of culture-loaded words indicates the significance of the reproduction of the source text and the adaptation to the target text eco-environment with literal translation,addition,omission and rewriting as main translation strategies.Goldblatt tends to reserve the linguistic and aesthetic features of the culture-loaded words by using the strategy of literal translation.Addition is adopted and necessary cultural background information is supplemented to allow target text readers' better understanding of the culture-loaded words.Omission can be adopted to reduce unwanted and unnecessary information for the gist.Rewriting helps to attain the transformation between source text and target eco-environments.The study in the framework of three-dimensional transformation shows that: for the translation of culture-loaded words on linguistic dimension,on the foundation of maintaining the linguistic features of source language,dialects and ecological culture-loaded words are tend to be domesticated while insulting words are foreignized;on cultural dimension,simplification,substitution and deletion are usually introduced to deal with political-sensitive or complicated plots;transformation and adaption are employed to cater to the religious cultural background and preference;as for the cultural-specific expressions and idioms,analogy and simplification occur alternatively;on communicative dimension,Goldblatt aims to reduce the cultural gaps and reflect Chinese culture.The current research is of both theoretical and practical significance.Theoretically,it is designed to illustrate the feasibility of applying the theories of Eco-translatology on the translation of culture-loaded words,which is proposed here as a tentative approach to translation studies;practically,a systemic functional analysis of Goldblatt's ingenious rewriting is deemed to enlighten the translation of contemporary Chinese literary works into English so that a more effective bridge can built for intercultural communication between China and Western countries.