A Study Of The Rewriting Phenomena In Howard Goldblatt’s Translation Of Big Breasts&Wide Hips From The Perspective Of Rewriting Theory

In the1980s, the appearance of “Cultural Turn” in translation field broadens thehorizons of translation study. Lefevere put translation into a wide social cultureenvironment and stressed the impacts of ideology, poetics and cultural factors in hisrewriting theory. Translation must be controlled by and serve for ideology and poetics.Lefevere held the opinion that “Translation is a rewriting of the original text.Translation creates another form of text.”After winning the Nobel Prize, Mo Yan’s works have drawn tremendousattention from all over the world. As one of Mo Yan’s most representative works,Feng Ru Fei Tun has attracted wide attention from the influential foreign media, suchas New Yorker and The Washington Post, as well as scholars and sinologists, thussetting a good example for other Chinese literary works aimed to enter foreignmarkets. Admittedly, Howard Goldblatt’s translation plays an important role in thesuccess of Big Breasts&Wide Hips overseas.In contrast with the world-wide attention, the studies on Goldblatt’s translationof Feng Ru Fei Tun are relatively scarce. On the one hand, previous studies on MoYan’s works are largely conducted from literary perspectives, while only a fewtranslation studies are made on corresponding English versions. And on the other,studies on Goldblatt are confined to his translation achievements and life experiences,with few case studies properly targeting the translator and his specific translations.Based on an elaborate analysis of the original work and its English version, thisthesis explores the factors that influence Goldblatt’s selection and translation of BigBreasts&Wide Hips from the aspect of ideology, poetics and patronage. The findingsare illustrated as follows: Goldblatt’s selection of work is mainly according to his own interest, namely,the translator’s own ideology. In consideration of the publication and sales of thetranslated works, the publishing house serving as the patronage and the target readerswho represent the dominant ideology also play a pivotal role in the process ofselection.During the process of translation, in order to make a readable and marketabletranslated version, Goldblatt made a lot of alteration, due to the differences lying inideology, poetics and reading habits. Consequently, the language beauty and culturalmarks are inevitably lost.