Cultural Misreading In Literary Translation-A Case Study Of Red Sorghum

The history of translation is quite long both in China and western countries. Literary translation studies from the cultural perspective have been neglected for a long time because most of the previous studies focus on the linguistic aspects conveying the source text and also the marginal status of literary translation studies itself. As translation studies took the "cultural turn" in 1980s, people began to evaluate translation from the cross-cultural perspective. Translation has been reinterpreted as informational communication across languages and cultures. Such a cultural perspective demonstrates that it is impossible for the translation to be exactly loyal to the source text. On the contrary, translation sometime misreads the source text.The thesis bases its analysis on modern hermeneutics and the reception theory. With the implication supplied by the reception theory, due to the limitation of translators' presupposition and the openness of text, the meaning produced in the dialogue between the translator and the author is certainly dialectical and thus provides possibility for misreading. Since the interpretation of source texts occurs in the context of culture, the translator may misread or distort idiosyncratic cultures.The thesis selects several examples from the English version of Mo Yan's Honggaoliang Jiazu, translated by Howard Goldblatt. By a comparison study of examples from the source text and the target text, the thesis states the possibility and inevitability of cultural misreading due to complex reasons both objective and subject. Cultural misreading is mainly resulted from translator's presupposition, readers' reception and different roles of translators playing in the translation process. Translator's presupposition including his language background determines his misreading of the source text. The English and Chinese languages belong to different systems so there are linguistic gaps blocking the transform of meanings. Unique cultural aspects also pose difficulties for the translator in translation, for the target text readers' reception is different from that of the source text readers. Whether to keep the original culture or to familiarize the cultural specific images as target text culture images always worth weighing. The translator's political sense, aesthetic flavor, and ethical values contribute a lot to the forming of his subjectivity, which always has impact on him in translation process. Through the examples of cultural misreading in Red Sorghum, the thesis also attempts to figure out the effects of the cultural misreading. On the one hand, cultural misreading sometimes carries positive sense by promoting the acceptance of the source text and enriching the literary genre. On the other hand, it plays negative roles in translation due to its distortion of the source text, wrong conveyance of the theme, and thus hinders the cultural exchange. After the exploration of the cause and effect, the thesis draws a conclusion that cultural misreading in literary translation is inevitable, the translator's subjectivity dominates his mind in the process of his reading, interpreting and reproducing of the source text and his translation is therefore the product of his misreading. In the global context of today, it is necessary to evaluate cultural misreading on an objective ground. Only with a clear awareness of the positive and negative effects of cultural misreading can translators minimize the negative effects of cultural misreading and achieve effective cultural exchange.