Study on Howard Goldblatt's Translation of Big Breasts and Wide Hips

Abstract

With the rapid development of Chinese economy, Chinese literary works have gradually been catching the world’s attention. As far as translating Chinese literary works are concerned, Howard Goldblatt is a master in translating works of Mo Yan who is famous as the first native Chinese winner of Nobel Prize in Literature. Goldblatt’s translation represents a paradigm of translating Chinese literary works as it possess certain characteristics which have facilitated the success of his translation. This study seeks to get an insight into translation of Chinese literary works by analyzing Goldblatt’s translation works Big Breasts and Wide Hips originally written by Mo Yan and its enlightenments on translation of Chinese literary works. It is found that adaptation as well as flexible application of both domestication and foreignization is a remarkable feature of his translation works and some mistranslations do exist but is only slight deviations or inadvertent negligence due to linguistic and cultural difference. These translation strategies, namely, adaptation, domestication and foreignization, work together to strike a balance between readability and loyalty to facilitate English readers to comprehend Chinese culture better, which is a source of enlightenment on how to tell Chinese stories to the world—translation of Chinese literary works.

Keywords—Howard Goldblatt; Chinese Stories; translation; Chinese literary works; adaptation; domestication;  foreignization