1. Introduction 

1.1 Significance of the Study

Nowadays, more and more foreigners want to know more about China. China possesses an important status in the world. Foreigners have more chances to enjoy its landscape and culture because of Chinese policies of reform and opening. Chinese local culture plays a vital role in the Chinese cultural system. It is a significant task to recommend and introduce our traditional local culture to the foreigners and to the whole outside world. Consequently, translating Chinese local culture is very meaningful and valuable.

It is obvious that culture communication is becoming more and more frequent between the west and China. In the 21st century, this trend is highly speeded up due to the effect of Internet. Almost every aspect is communicated by different countries. The power of a nation can be composed of two aspects; one is hard power and another is soft power which is closely connected with culture. This thesis tries to make contributions to the circulation of Chinese local culture. At the same time, this thesis manages to make some efforts to the translation of Chinese local culture.

1.2 Purpose of the Study

The study approaches the problem of translation strategies from a new perspective—the Skopos theory, using a descriptive approach in order to conduct any fruitful discussions. It also makes a systematic investigation into the factors, which affect the translator’s adoption of domestication and foreignization in translation and on this basis to determine which strategy to be employed, which is determined by the skopos. Importantly, the thesis points out in this research that domestication and foreignization are considered to be significant and to be closely connected to each other rather than binary oppositions.

1.3 Research Questions

The paper tries to explore the translation of local culture in the following aspects:

1. What are different translation methods and strategies adopted in translating local culture in Red Sorghum?

2. What can possibly be the factors that impact the translator’s strategy? 

2. Literature Review

2.1 Brief Introduction to MoYan and Red Sorghum

Mo Yan (莫言), (whose real name is Guan Moye), is an prominent novelist in China. He was born in Gao Mi Township ,Shan Dong province in 1955 .When he was a child, he went to school at his hometown but later left off his study due to Chinese Cultural Revolution, only to work in the rural area for many years. In 1976, he joined the People's Liberation Army and became a member of the cultural affairs department. Since the middle of 1980s, a lot of literary works about rural areas developed, and their themes were about the complex emotions of love and hatred for his land. Thus he was categorized as one of the ‘root-seeking’ writers.

In 1986, Mo Yan issued his novella Hong Gao Liang Jia Zu, which caused a great response. As an author of many short stories, some short novels and several novellas, he has almost won each national literary prize in China. Mo Yan and his novel Red Sorghum have been greatly praised by the Western newspapers. 

Mo Yan brilliantly and fondly recreates life with writing that reeks of gunpowder, blood and death. Jeffery Kinkley calles Mo Yan “a young, defiantly experimental writer, and his story takes a modernist track, interweaving past and present fragments of a main plot and subplots into a slightly mystifying yet cinematic and classically suspenseful grand narrative—cinematic because of his mesmerizing red symbolism: red sorghum, red blood, red sunsets, red bridal veils, red wine” (Kinkley,1994: 428)

2.2 Brief Introduction to Howard Goldblatt and Red Sorghum源'自:吹冰`~论`文'网www.chuibin.com

2.2.1 Howard Goldblatt’s Translation Career

Howard Goldblatt, whose Chinese name is Ge Haowen, has been seen as “the most important translator of modern and contemporary Chinese literature in the west”(Shu Jinyu,2005:8) and “the most active and prospective translator to translate modern and contemporary Chinese literature into English”(Liu Zaifu, 1999: 135).