Howard Goldblatt and Translation

Howard Goldblatt is a celebrated sinologist and American literary translator of numerous contemporary Chinese literary works. He has translated over fifty volumes of Chinese fiction, memoirs, and poetry, including many of the most prominent authors such as Mo Yan ( ), Chun-ming Huang ( ), and Rou-xi Chen ( ). He was the winner of 2000 National Translation Award by the American Literary

Translators Association for his translation of Notes of a Desolate Man from Taiwanese writer Tien-wen Chu. His most widely known achievement is that he introduced readers in the English-speaking world to Mo Yan, who received the Nobel Prize in Literature for his work in 2012.

Goldblatt was born in 1939 in Long Beach, California. When he was a young adult, he wasn’t interested in learning at all and lived in idleness. He considered himself “an absolutely abysmal student.” Not knowing what to do after college graduation, he joined the Navy and it was the time he first encountered Chinese. During his tour of

duty with the US Navy, he was sent to the military base in Taiwan at the beginning of the 1960s. He started reading and studying Chinese and found that he was good at it.

After his duty was over, he stayed two more years and went to the Mandarin Center in Taiwan to learn Chinese. Returning to the US, he was accepted by the Chinese language program of San Francisco State University and received a master degree in 1971. He furthered his study at Indiana University and received his doctoral degree in 1974. With his thesis topic on Chinese writer Xiao Hong, Goldblatt not only discovered the

nameless female writer but also translated her several works like The Field of Life and Death and Tales of Hulan River.

Howard Goldblatt has made a great contribution to the translation and introduction of Chinese literature to the western world. As an experienced and productive translator, Goldblatt has his own thoughts and considerations on translation. He expressed in The Writing Life of The Washington Post that “I do not consider translation to be a lesser art – one that ought to lead to something better. The short, and very personal, answer to the question is: Because I love it. I love to read Chinese; I love to write in English. I love the challenge, the ambiguity, and the uncertainty of the enterprise. I love the tension between creativity and fidelity, even the inevitable compromises.” To Goldblatt, translating is like a tug of war between creativity and fidelity. Especially to the

translation of literary works, the translator has to weigh all factors involved so as to preserve the flavor and aesthetics of the original.

Regarding the translator’s visibility, he argues in A Mi Manera: Howard Goldblatt at Home A Self-Interview that “the translator is always visible and always invisible”

(100). To him, translation will always be an interpretive new work no matter how close it may be to the original. He borrowed American literary translator Gregory Rabassa’s word to elucidate this concept: “A piece of writing cannot be cloned in another language,

only imitated” (100). In order to reach the commensurate effect in the original,

Goldblatt deems it necessary to have some creativity when translating. The translator is suggested to render a text interpretively rather than word by word, or phrase by phrase.

Goldblatt’s translation philosophy is that “as a translator he is, first and foremost, a reader” (100). Just like general readers, he interprets while translating a text. During the translating process, he would examine whether he has given his reader the opportunity to enjoy the work in much the same way as a reader of the original could enjoy it.

Although Goldblatt said that he serves two masters, the author and the reader, he believes that the translator has a primary responsibility to the reader, not the writer. To attend to the American readership, he suggests a translator’s English to be “idiomatic and contemporary without being flashy” (Lingenfelter). Goldblatt seldom reads a work more than once before translating. For him, it offers an opportunity to experience the work and interpret it at the same time, which can bring “a sense of spontaneity” to the work as he is convinced (100).

In response to the close scrutiny his translations subjected to, Howard Goldblatt expresses his gratitude yet wishes for a broader critique, a holistic review on his translated works. To make it clearer, he prefers a review that measures a work’s degree of success in terms of overall fidelity, including tone, register, clarity, appeal, the grace of expression, and so on. He thought it is unhelpful for one to point out the translator’s failing of not footnoting a cultural or historical reference or his misinterpretation of an obscure allusion. It seems to him that looking too closely to a translation may narrow one’s vision toward a work.

In an interview with Andrea Lingenfelter, Goldblatt states that problems specific to translating from Chinese into English are literalism and the translator’s fear of the text.

As a translator, both Chinese and English capabilities are required. He recommends

young translators get a feel for English instead of being circumscribed by the language itself. The translator’s not knowing Chinese well enough will not pose a real problem to English translation. He observes that Chinese readers have different expectations of a work of fiction from Western readers. They give an author more leeway in writing and have more tolerance and acceptance of long novels. Western readers, on the contrary, are not that tolerant. As a result, American editors and publishers are used to shortening or revising Chinese novels for marketing reasons. Sometimes the translator has no choice but to make changes to the text accordingly.

As for Goldblatt’s cotranslation of Tien-wen Chu’s Notes of a Desolate Man with Sylvia Li-chun Lin, he considers it a natural fit. For one thing, Sylvia knew the author.

For the other, she was deeply familiar with the cultural background and was familiar with the novel (100). This collaborative effort took much more time than a single translator may have spent, but both of them share the fruits of a job well done. Since then, they have translated several novels by Tibetan writer Alai, Fei-yu Bi, and many others.

Concerning Chinese literature in western countries, Goldblatt indicates that Chinese fiction is not well-received in the West. The reason may possibly be the lack of character depth in the fiction since it is the standard by which sensitive readers in the West judge literary fiction. Taiwanese writers such as Chun-ming Huang, Hsien-yung Pai, and the Chu sisters are exceptions, who do better at exploring the inner world of characters. He also points out that many Chinese novelists cannot read his/her own writing objectively and therefore a second person’s help would be beneficial. However, the job is often left to translators and foreign editors (104).

Goldblatt’s views on translation, concluded by Mei Yu, are that “translation is betrayal; translation is rewriting; translation is cross-cultural communication; translation

is compromise of fidelity and creativity” (12).

“We must thank the Italians for reminding us that every translation is a betrayal”

(Howard Goldblatt, The Writing Life, 2002). For Goldblatt, it is almost impossible for a translation to remain absolutely faithful or equivalent to the original. Mei Yu adds further insight to our understanding of ‘betrayal’: “‘betrayal’ is not to add something randomly but to ‘modify’ according to the characteristics of the target language, target culture and target environment to make the translation more understandable for the target readers” (16). “By ‘betraying’ the original text (being disloyal to it)”, commented by Christopher Lupke, “an ideal translator also ‘betrays’ it (in the sense of ‘revealing’ it) to the English-language readership in a highly imaginative form that does justice to the individuality and cultural uniqueness of the original text” (90). With examples of Goldblatt’s translation of Mo Yan, Mei Yu elaborates on how Goldblatt felicitously modifies the text to suit the context.

In regard to translation as rewriting, Goldblatt holds the opinion that “most writers at least tolerate the men and women given the task of rewriting -- for that is surely the nature of translation -- their work into other languages.” Because of the intrinsic

difference between Chinese and English, the translator sometimes has to adopt rewriting to convey and keep the cultural and historical nuances of the original in the target language.

Over the past years, Goldblatt has formed a special relationship with several authors as a result of their trust placed in him, and partly due to their willingness to deal with inevitable queries regarding difficulties, even errors, in their texts. Mo Yan, for instance, is complimented by Goldblatt as “one of those gracious individuals who sings the praises of his translator as often as his translator sings his as a novelist.”, who helps

“revealing obscure cultural and historical aspects of his work, and comprehends the

unavoidable fact that a translation can only complement, not replicate, the original.”

Seeing the insufficiency and incompleteness of translation, Goldblatt agrees with George Steiner’s observation that “Ninety percent of all translation is inadequate.” In a translation, a piece of writing is transformed, changed, not as a measure of the quality of our work. Translation is an unfinished project. Novels, poems and other written works are not produced to be recreated and therefore are irreplaceable. Despite its inadequacy, Goldblatt is convinced that translation is all people could have if good writing is to have its life extended, spatially and temporally.

As a translator, Goldblatt has set a high standard for himself and his objective is to select stuff that he thinks “deserves a second life and then gives it as good a life as possible.” If the translation can satisfy the author, he would be delighted. However, if the author is discontented, but the reader is happy, he could live with that. The above are what aspires him to continue his lifework as a translator.