A Study On Translator's Subjectivity Of Howard Goldblatt's Translation Of Frog From The Perspective Of Eco-translatology

As a vital link between the original work of an author and new non-native readers,a translators' importance is indisputable.However,in the domain of traditional translatology,the status of translators and the significance of their work had largely been deemed to be superficial,and even negligible.It was not until the1960 s when the concept of "cultural turn" emerged,that the role and status of translators were gradually accepted and valued for its contributions to the discipline.In reviewing the concept,Professor Hu Gengshen formed and established his interdisciplinary theory of eco-translatology,which is a combination of ecology and translatology.This theory provides a new framework of thinking for both translation activities and translation evaluation criteria.The core idea of eco-translatology is that translation activity is the process of the translator's adaptation to and selection of translational eco-environment.In this process,translators need to put their subjectivity into full play with a view to producing translated versions of high quality.Frog,a full-length masterpiece completed by Nobel laureate Mo Yan,had been conceived and planned for more than ten years and worked on for over four years.During this period,the manuscript that now simultaneously touches and hurts the souls of many Chinese,was revised and refined three times before the final version we have now appeared.One of the unique features of this work is the way it integrates letters,novels,and drama,a style which is rarely used in other Chinese novels,and for which it won the Mao Dun Literature Prize in 2012,a prize that symbolizes the work as having a widely accepted high artistic value in literature.The English version of Frog was published in 2014 by the famous American sinologist Howard Goldblatt,considered by many to be "the most distinguished translator of modern and contemporary Chinese literature".Since its publication,studies of Howard Goldblatt's Frog have not been focused upon by many domestic or foreign researchers,with even fewer researchers examining the work from the perspective of eco-translatology.With eco-translatology as the theoretical framework,the translation process is divided into two stages: one is the stage in which the translator adapts to thetranslational eco-environment;the other is the stage in which the translator,as the translational eco-environment,selects the target text.In this thesis,the author takes Howard Golblatt's Frog as the case to explore the embodiment of translator's subjectivity in the process of adaptation and selection from the perspective of eco-translatology,and to analyze the quality of the translation in the light of the evaluation criteria proposed by Professor Hu Gengshen.The result of qualitative analysis and case analysis indicates that in the adaptation stage,the translator is not passively constrained by the translational eco-environment,but is actively taking the initiative to exploit the advantages of subjectivity to the fullest extent for the purpose of adapting to the translational eco-environment composed of the internal and external needs as well as the bilingual and bicultural competence of the translator.In the selection stage,the translator achieves the consistency between the source text and the target text in linguistic,cultural and communicative dimensions by using domestication and foreignization translation strategies and translation methods,like addition,omission,transliteration,rewriting,etc.Meanwhile,detailed analyses of the work conducted in line with the evaluation criteria of multi-dimensional transformation degree,readers' feedback,and translator's quality provide further proof for the high quality of the work.The conclusion of the study on Howard Goldblatt's Translation of Frog is that his success lies in: In the first translation stage,the adaptation and selection between the translator and the translational eco-environment are bidirectional and interactive;Also,the translator is not totally passive,but fully active,whether at the adaptation stage or selection stage,by taking all the factors in the translational eco-environment like the culture,politics,history,as well as the aesthetic expectation and reading experience of target readers and contextual effects of the translation into account.And thus,authentic folk Chinese culture in the work is recognized and accepted by target readers while they are appreciating the charm of Chinese literature.