References 14

Studies on Dialects Translation in Red Sorghum from the Perspective of Skopos Theory

Chapter One Introduction

1.1The Research of Red Sorghum’s translation

Red Sorghum, a novella published in 1985 by Mo Yan, is his most famous novella and helps he won the Noble Prize in literature in 2012. It derives from a true story and tells a story about Anti-Japanese War and the love story about “my” grandmother. It is highly recommended by many writers home and abroad. 

This novella has a derivative work—a film of the same name, which is directed by Zhang Yimou and won the Golden Bear in the 38th Berlin International Film Festival in 1988. 

At the beginning, many people were just interested in the film and few people knew about the novella but Red Sorghum has began to arise more attention from people in 2012 as Mo Yan became the first Chinese who had won the Noble Prize in literature. And there are more and more studies and researches on it and all of these can be roughly pided into three aspects:1) study on the culture 2) study on the translation strategy 3) study on the dialect translation.

Though some people have studied on the dialects, there is no one studying on dialect translation in Red Sorghum from the perspective of skopos theory. Moreover, translation is an action with a target goal, so the value of a translation version should be judged according to its achievement of the goal. Thus, it is assumed that the study on dialects according to skopos theory will be meaningful.

1.2 Significance of the Study

Firstly, dialects are very important in literary works and suitable dialects will help readers better understand the literary work. Dialects are also a mirror that reflects all the characters of the people and the place. Just like Hu Shi once wrote “dialects show the character with blood and fresh”.

Secondly, dialect translation is very difficult in literary works. Dialects are heavily local-cultural-loaded, which may impede the cross-cultural understanding. Like Han Ziman said: “Dialects do not only express some certain literal meanings, but also bear important literal style functions, which have particular artistic effects, such as strengthening the true sense of the work, helping model characters or adding some humor sense or sarcasm into the work. But because of the differences between two different languages, the traditions of language usages and the different culture contained in dialects, it is difficult to realize these functions.”

Thirdly, Red Sorghum is a masterpiece of Mo Yan and the translation version of Howard Goldblatt is a good example for literature translation. As we are making efforts to make our culture “go global”, we should focus on such famous literary translation.

 1.3 The Skopos Theory

The skopos theory is established by the German linguist Hans Vermeer. Skopos theory considers translation as a purposeful activity. To translate means to produce a target text with a target purpose or aim for target audience in a target circumstance. “Vermeer defines human action as intentional, purposeful behavior that takes place in a given situation.”(Christiane Nord, 2001, p.11)

And translation is also one of human action, thus it is an intentional and purposeful behavior. In Vermeer’s approach, “Any form of translational action, including therefore translation itself, may be conceived as an action, as the name implies. Any action has an aim, a purpose. […] The word skopos, then, is a technical term for the aim or purpose of a translation. […] Further: an action leads to a result, a new situation or event, and possibly to a ‘new’ object.”(Christiane Nord, 2001, p.12)

As Vermeer makes no attention of the source text, the status of the source is lower in skopos theory. However, “Skopostheorier was developed as the foundation for a general theory of translation able to embrace theories dealing with specific languages and culture.” (Christiane Nord, 2001, p.12) Therefore, research on dialect translation bases on skopos theory is worth learning.