On Howard Goldblatt’s Translation Of Folk Culture-specific Items In Three Sisters From The Perspective Of Translator Behavior Criticism

Bi Feiyu,a famous contemporary Chinese writer,wins the third Lu Xun Literature Award by his novel Yumi.In 2010,the English version of Yumi,Three Sisters,translated by Howard Goldblatt and his wife Slyvia Li-chun Lin,wins Man Asian Literary Prize.Yumi contains rich folk culture.Folklore,namely folk customs,refers to the life culture created,enjoyed and inherited by the masses of people in a country or nation.Originating from life needs of human groups,folklore forms,expands and evolves in specific nations,eras and regions to serve the daily life of common people.Folklore can be roughly divided into economic folklore,social folklore,folklore of belief together with folklore of recreation and art.Different stages of life need to be regulated by folklore—wedding ceremony is needed to obtain social recognition when one gets married;folklore also exists in people’s spiritual world—from lunar New Year’s Eve to the second day of new year,one is not allowed to sweep the floor,or the luck of wealth will be destroyed.Folk culture is a window to show the charm of Chinese culture to the rest of the world.The "going global" of Chinese literature cannot be separated from the spread of folk culture.The research thoughts of this thesis are as follows:above all,according to Aixela’s categories of translation strategies for culture-specific items,this thesis analyzes Howard Goldblatt’s translation strategies for culture-specific items in Yumi,and takes"Truth-seeking-Utility-attaining" evaluative model of continuum as a tool so as to explore his translation behavior tendencies in the continuum.In addition,this thesis evaluates Howard Goldblatt’s translation behaviors according to three elements of translator behavior and translation quality evaluation,which includes degree of text truth-seeking,degree of effect utility-attaining and degree of translator behavior rationality.The conclusions of this thesis are as follows.firstly,when Howard Goldblatt translates folk culture-specific words in Yumi,he adopts four kinds of conservation strategies(transliteration,non-cultural translation,extratextual gloss,intratextual gloss)and three kinds of substitution strategies(absolute universalization,naturalization and deletion).The use frequency of conservation strategies is lower than that of substitution strategies,showing that Howard Goldblatt is inclined to meet readers’ needs rather than convey Chinese folk culture.As the degree of cross-cultural manipulation of the translation strategies used by Howard Goldblatt becomes higher gradually,his translation behavior gradually changes from the left end "truth-seeking" to the right end "utility-attaining" in "Truth-seeking-Utility-attaining"evaluative model of continuum.The relationship between the translation strategies and his translation behavior tendencies are as follows:transliteration—leaning towards"truth-seeking",non-cultural translation—leaning towards "truth-seeking" or keeping a balance between "truth-seeking" and "utility-attaining",extratextual gloss and intratextual gloss—keeping a balance between "truth-seeking" and "utility-attaining",absolute universalization,naturalization and deletion—leaning to "utility-attaining".Among these behavior tendencies,the frequency leaning to "utility-attaining" are the highest,the frequency keeping balance between "truth-seeking" and "utility-attaining" is higher,and the frequency of leaning to "truth-seeking" is the lowest,showing that Howard Goldblatt translation behavior principle is "utility-attaining as the main and to seek truth while attaining utility",Secondly,Howard Goldblatt’s degree of translation behavior rationality is high in general.The evaluation of his translation behaviors can be divided into four categories:high degree of text truth-seeking,high degree of effect utility-attaining and high degree of translation behavior rationality with the best evaluation;low degree of text truth-seeking,high degree of effect utility-attaining and high degree of translation behavior rationality with better evaluation;high degree of text truth-seeking,low degree of effect utility-attaining and high degree of translation behavior rationality with better evaluation;low degree of text truth-seeking,low degree of effect utility-attaining and low degree of translation behavior rationality with the worst evaluation.The number of his translation behaviors with better evaluation is the most,that with the best evaluation is the second,and that with the worst evaluation is the least.