A Study On The English Translation Of Tales Of Hulan River From The Perspective Of Eco-translatology

Howard Goldblatt is a famous American sinologist and translator,whose translation career starts with his study on Xiao Hong and the northeast writers of the Chinese New Literature period.He is a foreign translator who has translated the largest number of Chinese novels.He is renowned as “a recognized chief translator of modern and contemporary Chinese literature” by Professor C.T.Hsia.Goldblatt is deeply attracted by Xiao Hong's talents and he has devoted many years to the translation of Xiao Hong's works.Tales of Hulan River,the representative work of Xiao Hong,became the first work of Goldblatt's translation career.This paper attempts to conduct a systematic study on Tales of Hulan River,translated by Howard Goldblatt,under the theoretical framework of eco-translatology.Eco-translatology is a translation research approach of ecology,which provides a new perspective for translation studies.Under eco-translatology,translation is defined as “the translator's selection activities to the transplant of the text after his adaptation to the translational eco-environment”.This dissertation mainly focuses on the following two aspects: the first one is the reason why Goldblatt chooses to translate Tales of Hulan River and how he adapts to the translational eco-environment at that time and becomes the ideal person to translate Tales of Hulan River;the second one is the translator's adaptive selection and transformation of the target text based on his adaptation to the translational eco-environment.It has been found out that Goldblatt initially chose to translate Tales of Hulan River out of his own internal needs and the external needs of his time.Internal needs refer to the translator's strong interests in modern and contemporary Chinese literature and his genuine love for Xiao Hong's works.Combined with the translator's outstanding bilingual and bicultural competence,all these factors made him the ideal person to translate Tales of Hulan River.External needs refer to the great void of research and translation of modern and contemporary Chinese literature in the western world at that time.Both internal and external needs are the reasons why Goldblatt chooses to translate Tales of Hulan River.In the process of translation,Goldblatt's adaptive selection and transformation of linguistic,cultural and communicative dimensions of the target text is based on his full understanding andresearch of the original text.Although the translator uses such strategies as foreignization and domestication,the most adopted one is domestication which aims to give western readers a clearer understanding of Chinese culture.The translator tends to use rewriting as his translation method and aims to better deal with the loose structure of the original text.After translating,the author evaluates and analyzes the translation from three aspects,namely,the degree of multi-dimensional transformation,reader's feedback and the quality of translator.It is found that Goldblatt's translation can be regarded as a translation with relatively high degree of holistic adaptation and selection.The significance of this study is that eco-translatology,an indigenous translation theory,can be implemented in the research of empirical translation.At the same time,this paper provides a new theoretical approach to the research on Tales of Hulan River translated by Howard Goldblatt.It enriches the research on foreign translation of modern and contemporary Chinese literature and gives some inspiration to the study of Goldblatt's early translation thought and translation style.