A Sthdy On The Translation Of Red Sorghum From Talmy’s Perspective Theory

The exciting news that Mo Yan won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2012, not only draws the world attention to Chinese literature, but also puts Howard Goldblatt’s translations on the agenda of translation studies, who is a well-known American scholar and translator. Among the researches on Howard Goldblatt’s translations, they either give general statements on his translation conceptions, or on how to study translation from different perspectives, such as polycultural or cultural turn and so on, or on linguistic characteristics between the original and the translation based on the comparative linguistic method. There are no research paper done from the perspective of cognitive linguistics, especially combination of theory of cognitive linguistics and perspective in the novel, which explore the change and consistency in the process of translation.As a universal and cognitive phenomenon of human, perspective will contribute to disclose cognitive phenomenon and cognitive laws both theoretically and practically by the observation of language expression and structure.This paper takes Mo Yan’s Hong Gao Liang Jia Zu and Howard Goldblatt’s English translation of Red Sorghum as the main corpus and utilizes Talmy’s perspective theory and Figure-Ground theory to interpret cognitive spatial relationship in language. The author of this MA thesis raises four research questions to explore the operation mode in detail in terms of perspective theory: 1.Whether the translation Red Sorghum changes the perspectival location of the original? How to keep the perspectival location and for what reason does the translator make such changes? 2 Whether the translation Red Sorghum changes the perspectival distance of the original? How to keep the perspectival distance and for what reason does the translator make such changes? 3 Whether the English translation Red Sorghum changes the perspectival mode of the original? How to keep the perspectival mode and for what reason does the translator make such changes? 4 Whether the English translation Red Sorghum changes the direction of viewing of the original? How to keep the direction of viewing and for what reason does the translator make such changes?By means of documentary method and intensive reading, the author of this thesis makes quantitative and qualitative studies on some examples. The discoveries are as follows: The change of exterior and interior perspective is consistent with the change of Figure and Ground in translation, but the same perspectival location is likely to appear the change of Figure and Ground. Omission of marked words such as “he/she saw” “he/she hear” leads to the difference of Figure and Ground in translation. Perspectives from interior and exterior may be due to different perceptions of real world knowledge between Chinese and western people, thus leading to different perspectival location in the level of language; perspectival distance may be indicated by motive verb and demonstrative “lai” “qu” “zhe” and “na” and the omission of some plots is also the manifestation of change; The alteration of synoptic and sequential mode can be reflected in the modification of omniscient perspective and rearrangement of translation’s plots; Fictive motion is a manifestation of perspective’s state or perspectival motility, which presents the dynamic or stationary mode, static and dynamic may take place mutual changes in translation; modification of direction of viewing can be found at the root of Figure and Ground in cognition in complex sentence. The paper mainly observes temporal complex sentences to find out the motives of inconsistency and consistency in consequential and antisequential perspectival mode.Research on perspective of language in configuration system has important theoretical and practical value in revealing the relationship of language and cognition. Figure-Ground theory has strong explanatory power in the interpretation of perspective’s inconsistency and consistency in the process of Chinese-English translation.