莫言作品中人名英译的特征研究——以《蛙》和《红高粱》为例 The Stylistic Features of the Translation of Characters’ Names in Mo Yan’s Works ——Based on Frogs and Red Sorghum开题报告

1. 研究目的与意义（文献综述）

it’sacknowledged that chinese culture with a long history is one of the mostextensive and profound cultures in the whole world, which implies its difficultyin translating chinese literature. in the history of literature translation inchina, name translation is a part most likely to be ignored for it is moredifficult, sophisticated and subtle, especially when the original versionincludes many slangs, local idioms and so on. however, names in chineseliterature play a vital role in works, no matter for representing chineseculture or featuring characters in a piece of work. thus, name translationbecomes one of the most indispensable parts in translating.

withthe rapid development of literature translation in recent years, of course,more and more importance has been attached to name translation and fruitfulpapers or researches on it have emerged, promoting its growth to an extent. butmost of them discuss theories and rules, only a small part of them attachingthose theories to a certain chinese work to explain why the translator tend totranslate these names in such a way. therefore, it’s likely to be still quitedifficult for foreign readers to understand the deep meaning under those names dueto cultural differences even if this work has been translated by an excellent translator.if attention is not paid to this aspect, it will be struggling not only totranslate names but to translate all chinese literature and to exchangecultures.

in2012, mo yan was awarded the nobel prize for literature, being the firstchinese to show the whole world the traditional chinese-style literary works. owingto that his works become very prevalent in translation circle. according to arough research, his major works like frog and red sorghum has been translatedinto more than 40 languages. mo yan’s works, which belongs to a special genrecalled native-soil literature, mostly describe the sufferings and hardships ofpeasants with the topic of village life, which makes his works full of chinesetraditional cultural features, especially those names of each character. thesepersonal names not only are some symbols identifying each person, but alsorepresent their respective characteristics. when translated to other languageversion, there is no doubt that name translation can be a tough task. thetranslated names should convey their deep meaning in chinese to readers while translatingthem under the general translation principle.

2. 研究的基本内容与方案

In recent years, MoYan’s works have gained greater reputation for he won the Nobel Prize forLiterature in 2012. From the perspective of name translation, this papercenters on the theories and methods adopted in the English translation versionof HowardGoldblattexemplifying Frog and Red Sorghum. Through analyzing thosestrategies in terms of advantages and disadvantages, a regular and practicalway of translating names can be concluded and used in later translating works. Inthis way, Chinese literature and even its culture can be better absorbed andgreatly enjoyed by foreigner readers.

Thewhole paper will adopt the following four researching methods. Firstly, theliterature research method: relevant books, journals and nets are researchedfor more information. Secondly, the classification analysis method: each name istranslated into different sorts and the reasons why translators choose totranslate them in this way are analyzed as well. Thirdly, the comprehensiveanalysis method: each translation method is evaluated in terms of two perspectives:advantages and disadvantages. Fourthly, the exemplifying method: Frog and Red Sorghum are exemplified as the representatives of Mo Yan’sworks to complete this research. The author of the paper will wirte this paperby collecting, sorting and searching books, journals from the library and onthe Internet.

3. 研究计划与安排

before 4th january : settlement of the title

before 20th march: submission of the outline

before 25th april : submission of the first draft

4. 参考文献（12篇以上）

[01]b. lian. theaesthetic factors affecting in literary translation[j]. zhouyi research, 2014(2),8-10.

[02]g. zhang. literarytranslation：the manipulation of the image[j].《校园英语》, 2012(15), 198.

[03]m. song. choice-makingin rendering culture-bound elements in literary translation: a case study onthe english translation [j]. english language teaching, 2014(10), 13-15.