On Howard Goldblatt’s Translation Of Sandalwood Death From The Perspective Of Translation As Adaptation And Selection

Tan Xiangxing is one of Mo Yan’s masterpieces,which arouses heated discussion in the literary circle.At the same time,the English translation Sandalwood Death translated by Howard Goldblatt successfully draws the attention of scholars and experts to make detailed research.And their research focuses on the dynamic equivalence,theory of translation compensation,transplanting and rewriting,Newmark’s translation theory,cultural translation theory,etc.Although most of the above-mentioned have their own merits and make elaborate interpretations on Sandalwood Death from the micro level or one aspect of the theory,few comprehensive studies are done from the macro level or from the angle of the translator’s the leading role.Hu Gengshen’s approach to translation as adaptation and selection indicates the direction for the study on translating process from the macro level.This theory indicates that the essence of translation is translator’s “selection activity of the translator’s adaptation to fit the translational eco-environment”(Hu,2004: 221).Therefore,the thesis will study Sandalwood Death from the theory of translation as adaptation and selection,for the aim of enriching the research of the translation.This thesis adopts the research method of qualitative analysis,and makes research on Sandalwood Death from the perspective of translation as adaptation and selection.The literature review is introduced firstly,and the theoretical framework is presented.Then the translator’s adaptation is analyzed in detail,including the adaptation to the needs,competence and translational eco-environment.The adaptation also means the selection of translational eco-environment on translator,just as the “survival of the fittest”.Then this paper investigates the adaptive selections and transformations of translator serving as the typically important component from the linguistic dimension,cultural dimension and communicative dimension.According to the research,it is found that Goldblatt’s translation Sandalwood Death is based on the selective adaptation to internal and external needs and personal competence,and the translation meets the needs of Western readers’ yearning for Chinese culture and realizes the translator’s self-fulfillment.With excellent bilingual competence and long-term translation practice,the translator makes skillfully multidimensional adaptive selections between Chinese and English.The translator completes the adaptation to the translational eco-environment including the original text,the target language,the source language,the reader and the three-dimensiontransformations.On linguistic dimension,the translator reproduces the original style of source text,such as Maoqiang opera language,figure of speech,colloquial language,etc;on cultural dimension,by employing foreignization and domestication,the translator completes the selection and transformations concerning ecological culture,social culture,religious culture and material culture;on communicative dimension,the communicative intention is conveyed by the amplification and omission of words and expressions,the addition of punctuation,the capitalization and italics of words and expressions.Based on the research of selection and adaptation in Sandalwood Death,this paper deepens the understanding on the connotation of translation as adaptation and selection,and verifies the applicability of the theory of translation as adaptation and selection.In addition,this study has reference values for a profound understanding of Sandalwood Death,and provides a new perspective for the study of English version Sandalwood Death.