Translators’ Adaption-selection in Life and Death are Wearing Me Out

Abstract

After Mo Yan has won 2012 Nobel Prize for Literature, the study on English translation of his translator Howard Goldblatt have been conducted continuously in literary translation fields. Making China heard and understood in a favorable way, English translators of Chinese literature offer an effective perspective. And it seems that Howard Goldblatt is much more successful in breaking down linguistic, cultural and communication barriers of the English and Chinese in his translation of Chinese literary works. The paper here attempts to study Goldblatt’s translation of Mo Yan’s Life and Death are Wearing me out with translators’ adaption-selection in the ecological environment within the eco-translatology. Based on English texts of Goldblatt’s translation, his role as a translator, i.e. adaption to eco-translational environmnet, and his selection in translation process will be discussed. Adaptiona and selection of a translator in Hu Gengshen’s eco-translatology is explored from dimension of linguistics, culture and communicatins. So in the paper, Goldblatt’s selection in his adaption to ecological translation environment in Life and Death are Wearing Me Out is analysed accordingly. It is expected that the tentative study on translators’ adaption and selection would be some of value in translating Chinese literary works into English speaking countries in the long run.