A Study of Religious Culture Translation from the Perspective of Medio-Translatology——With Reference to Rice Translated by Howard Goldblatt

Abstract As a novel of new historicism written by Su Tong, Rice contains plentiful Buddhist and Taoist culture and related words. Under the instruction of Medio-Translatology written by Xie Tianzhen, this paper takes the English version of Su Tong’s novel Rice as the example, is to analyze the translation of religious culture elements from the angle of culture. Through comparative research on original work and translation, this paper aims to manifest the distorted religious culture during the process of translation between the two languages with different cultural backgrounds. Besides, the strategies adopted by Howard Goldblatt when translating those culturally-loaded words also reflect translator’s cultural orientation and cultural translation theory. 46969

Keywords: Rice; Medio-Translatology; Religious Culture; Translation

 从译介学角度看宗教文化翻译——以葛浩文译小说《米》为例

摘要《米》是苏童的一部长篇小说，同时也是新历史主义小说的代表作。小说中出现了许多体现佛教和道教文化的相关语汇。本文以谢天振《译介学》为理论指导，主要从文化译介的角度讨论苏童作品《米》的英译本中对宗教文化元素的翻译处理，通过对原作和译作进行比较研究，从而了解中国宗教元素的文化内涵在翻译传递过程中的变化情况。同时，对译者葛浩文所采取的翻译方法和策略及其对原文的影响进行分析，更深层次地认识译者的文化取向和翻译观。

毕业论文关键词：《米》；译介学；宗教文化；翻译

 Contents

1. Introduction 1

1.1 Research Background 1

1.2 Research Question 1

1.3 Significance of the Research 1

2. Novel Rice and Its English Version 2

2.1 Author Su Tong 2

2.2 Brief Summary of Rice 2

2.3 Translator Howard Goldblatt 2

2.4 Literature Review 2

2.5 Publication in English-Speaking Countries 3

3 Literature Translation and Cross Culture 4

3.1 Relationship Between Literature Translation and Cross Culture 4

3.2 Medio-Translatology 4

3.2.1 A Brief Review 4

3.2.2 Distortion of Cultural Images in the Process of Translation 4

4 Delivery of Religious Culture in Novel Rice 6

4.1 Buddhist and Taoist Cultures in China 6

4.2 Expansion and Distortion of Cultural Information 6

4.2.1 Buddhist Elements 6

4.2.2 Taoist Elements 7

5 English Version of Rice Translated by Howard Goldblatt 9

5.1 Translation Strategy Adopted by Translator 9

5.2 Translator’s Cultural Orientation and Cultural Translation Theory 9

5.3 Creative Treachery in Translation of Rice 9

6 Conclusion 11

1. Introduction

Translation has a rather long history in the West and in China, however, translator’s status has long been ignored. Traditional translation theories mainly focused on the source text and were confined to the linguistic level by exploring how to achieve faithfulness and equivalence. In recent years, a wave of new translation theories emerged and began to pay more attention to the subjectivity in the process of translation.