Study on the Cultural Discounts of Local Features in Mo Yan’s Red Sorghum
— Take Howard Gold’s English Version for Example

Abstract

Mo Yan, a modern provincial novel, enjoys high prestige in the world of contemporary Chinese literature. He is one of the most well accepted writers whose works spread to the overseas widely in China. Red Sorghum, considered the masterpiece of Mo Yan, has received widespread attention from the scholars at home and abroad since published, and there are lots of translated versions of it. Among these versions, the English one translated by American sinologist Howard Goldbaltt is seen as the most faithful version to the original by far. However, is the English version totally faithful to the original? Can the local features in Red Sorghum be accepted by western readers?

In this thesis, a contrast is made between Howard Goldblatt’s version of Red sorghum and the original edition of it from the perspective of cultural discount. Through researching the translation of the local features in this novel, we can analysis the identity and variation of the novel which caused by differences in historical background and cultural environment between two countries in the cross-cultural communication. At the very beginning, the thesis proposes three kinds of cultural discounts that related to the local features: mistranslation of folk discourses, variation of narrative plots, and deficiency of aesthetic artistic conceptions. Then briefly introduces the reasonable presences of the local features. At last, it provides reasons for the cultural discounts. Thus, we draw some lessons and enlightenment from the novel’s spreading abroad, and find out the way for Chinese literary works to go abroad.

Key words: Mo Yan, cross-cultural communication，cultural discount, local features, folk discourse