A Study Of The English Translation Of The Republic Of Wine From The Perspective Of Hermeneutic Variation

As the most consuming full-length novel of Mo Yan,The Republic of Wine boasts multi-layered narrative structure,strong rural flavor as well as profound and insightful themes.With novelty of structure,subtleties of language and complexity of narrative,The Republic of Wine draws much attention from domestic scholars.However,few have discussed the hermeneutic variations in the English version of The Republic of Wine during its cross-cultural journey or touched upon academic values of the interactions and variations of heterogeneous cultures during translation activities.Hence,this thesis attempts to draw on the Variation Theory to approach the English translation of The Republic of Wine from the standpoint of Hermeneutic Variation.It centers on the variations of translated text in target linguistic environment and their causes.It mainly deals with the research object from the following three aspects.Firstly,this study digs into the linguistic phenomena with distinctive features,such as idioms,allusions,proverbs,dialects and vulgarism to discover how they are transformed and distorted in the collision with target culture.It is underpinned by the research mode of“seeking difference” and designed to figure out the factors contributing to linguistic variations as well as the translation effects of the variations.The research findings indicate that these hermeneutic variations are derived from the rendition’s transformation and adaptation under the foreign discourse rules,also the reconstruction of the translation due to the translator’s interpretation of the original.Secondly,this study focuses on Goldblatt’s treatment of cultural reference.It further dissects the cultural filtering and misreading in the translated text and accounts for the implicit cultural annotations added for Goldblatt’s thick translation.In addition,it deduces that Goldblatt mostly preserves the extended or figurative sense of words and phrases with Chinese cultural characteristics or literary allusions,while occasionally he resorts to strategies like alteration,deletion or cultural annotations out of consideration for target readers’ aesthetic expectation and cultural background.Thirdly,for worthy addition to the previous sections,this research also covers the cool reception of The Republic of Wine both at home and abroad.It first sketches out its unpopularity in different cultural and social environment and illustrates the underlying causes of its cool reception.The investigation reveals that The Republic of Wine was cold-shouldered at home in its early days because of social and ideological restrictions and that it failed to intrigue the Western readers for its overly complicated structure and narrative,which resulted in a great disparity in the influence of The Republic of Wine and Mo Yan’s other works.Through the employment of Variation Theory,a Chinese academic discourse,this thesis combines the research angle of Hermeneutic Variation with English translation of The Republic of Wine.Its research significance is to serve as a remedy for the previously pervasive “aphasia” phenomena in Chinese academia and to facilitate cross-cultural dialogue and interpretation.Besides,it constitutes a useful exploration of Chinese disciplinary discourse system,which offers inspiration for relevant research.