A Study On Goldblatt’s Translator Behaviors Under Translator Behavior Criticism Theory

Goldblatt is an excellent sinologist translator whose translation has been greatly welcomed in the western market.Against the background of promoting Chinese folk literature going global,it is of great help for Chinese translators to study Goldblatt’s translator motive and find out his translator identities through a full analysis of his translator behaviors in the translation activities.Based on the translator motive and translation effect,the author divides the translator behaviors into four types.Then the author extracts 258 specific cases from the first part of Frog.Through a deep analysis,the author has found that 36.4%(94cases)of them are Type A translation,achieving a high degree of truth-seeking;34.9%(90 cases)are Type C translation,achieving a high degree of utility-attaining;22.9%(59 cases)belong to Type B translation,achieving half truth-seeking and half utility-attaining,and 5.8%(15 cases)belong to Type D translation with zero truth-seeking.Then,the author re-categorizes the translator motive of Type D translations from the truth-seeking and utility-attaining.Finally,the author has found that 101cases(39%)are based on the truth-seeking motive and 96 cases(37%)are based on the utility-attaining motive.Thus,it can be seen that Goldblatt has a preference for truth-seeking rather than utility-attaining in translation of folk language in Frog.But due to the narrow gap,the author believes that Goldblatt has achieved a good balance between the truth-seeking and utility-attaining and generally has a flexible translator motive.From the perspective of intra-translation,the author has analyzed Goldblatt’s translation strategies of Chinese folk language and has found 15 cases of mistranslations,for which the author has summarized three reasons.From the perspective of extra-translation,the author has found Goldblatt is a quite pragmatic translator.Based on the statistics analysis,Goldblatt has two most striking identities: a cultural introducer and a creative translator.For this,the author has summarized five influencing factors based on a qualitative analysis.