| In 2012,Mo Yan won the Nobel Prize for literature and became the first Chinese Nobel Prize winner.The event set off a series of researches into Mo Yan's works as well as Howard Goldblatt,whose Chinese name is Ge Haowen,the Chinese-to-English translator of Mo Yan's works.It is widely claimed that Mo Yan's winning Nobel Prize owes a great deal to Goldblatt's contributions.As a well-known sinologist and translator,Goldblatt,whose translation skills are excellent and profound,has translated more than 70 Chinese literature works by more than 30 writers.Simply because of this,the idioms quoted from Howard Goldblatt's translation works are taken as the cases in this thesis.Known as the chief translator of Chinese literature and the ‘midwife' of Chinese literature in English world,Howard Goldblatt has indeed played a pivotal role in Chinese literature's “going global”.Idioms are used frequently in literary works and the use of idioms is regarded as a major feature of the Chinese language.More importantly,idioms are loaded with a variety of colorful Chinese culture elements.Thus,the translation of idioms is not merely a translation of a language,but a translation of the profound Chinese culture.It is chiefly due to this fact that the Chinese idioms translated by Howard Goldblatt are selected as the research object.Howard Glodblatt's translation style as well as his employment of translation strategies have been studied by numerous scholars.However,most studies revolving around him are about his use of translation strategy in one novel,and the studies on diachronic change of his translation is less done.In reality,it is a truth that it takes him many years to translate dozens of literature works and the translation strategies change over times.Based on that,this thesis focuses on the diachronic change of Foreignization and Domestication.Red Sorghum,Big Breasts & Wide Hips and Frog are chosen to be the source data.In all,with Howard Goldblatt's translation works,this thesis studies the diachronic change of Domestication and Foreignization on Chinese idioms translation.By case study and comparative analysis,this thesis aims to solve the following research questions:(1)In course of translating the Chinese idioms,what translation methods are used by Howard Goldblatt to fulfill domesticating and foreignizing purpose?(2)In Goldbltt's implement of Domestication and Foreignization strategies,what kind of diachronic change has happened over the past two decades?120 Chinese idioms are selected from Red Sorghum,Big Breasts & Wide Hips and Frog respectively and the equivalent translation of idioms are summarized to reveal the diachronic change of Domestication and Foreignization.It turns out that there are four methods mainly applied in translating Chinese idioms,that is,Free Translation,Imitation,Literal Translation and Word-for-word Translation.Among them,Free Translation and Imitation are the application of Domestication strategies while Literal Translation and Word-for-word Translation achieve Foreignization.In addition,Literal Translation is the chief method that accounts for 50.83%,59.16% and 63.34% respectively in the three books.In Red Sorghum,Big Breasts & Wide Hips,the use of Imitation,accounting for 20% and21.67%,ranks the second while in Frog,the use of Free Translation whose percentage is 20.83% ranks the second.From Red Sorghum,Big Breasts & Wide Hips and Frog,the application of Foreignization is increasing from 51.67%,61.66% to 68.34% while the use of domestication strategies is declining from 48.33%,38.34% to 31.66%.It can be seen that Howard Goldblatt tends to adopt Foreignization.In this way,more and more Chinese elements are retained in translated works,which promotes thedevelopment and spread of Chinese language and culture,and contributes to the cross-cultural communication to some extent.This research has broadened the study on the application of Domestication and Foreignization.It also gives some hints for literary translators to translate Chinese idioms. |
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