1. Introduction

1.1 Research background

Mo Yan, a famous Chinese novelist and short story writer, is awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for his work as a writer ”who mixes the hallucinatory realism with folk tales, history and the contemporary” (Peng, 2016). Mo Yan#8217;s works are epic historical novels characterized by hallucinatory realism and containing elements of black humor. A major theme in Mo Yan#8217;s works is the constancy of human greed and corruption, despite the influence of ideology. Using dazzling, complex, and often graphically violent images, he sets many of his stories near his hometown, Northeast Gaomi Township in Shandong province. Mo Yan began his career as a writer in the reform and opening up period, publishing dozens of short stories and novels.

In Mo Yan#8217;s big success, the contribution of his translator#8212;Howard Goldblatt should not be ignored. Howard Goldblatt is a translator of numerous works of contemporary Chinese fiction, including My Life as Emperor by Su Tong and Rickshaw Boy by Lao She. Glodblatt also translates works of Chinese first Nobel Prize in literature winner Mo Yan, including six of Mo Yan#8217;s novels and collections of stories. The fact that Mo Yan becomes well-known across the world proves that Glodblatt#8217;s translations are very successful.

With the great success of Mo Yan#8217;s Frog, more and more people at home and abroad began to pay attention to his works and the local novels which are imbued with abundant local colors. Usually, there are many kinds of cultural-loaded words in such novels. Under the circumstances, how to precisely translate the local novels into another target language is becoming a frequently-thought question for many researchers and experts. And, cultural-loaded words, for their frequent occurrence in the novels, become the most difficult part in translation. The cultural factors has long been regarded a tough thing to cope with during the process of translation.

For a long time, translation theorists mainly focused on the source text. And translation activity was merely confined to the linguistic level. With the development of translation studies, an important change had taken place in this area in 1960s. A new trend of translation which advocated cultural factors should also be taken into consideration in the process of translation had occurred. Among them, Susan Bassnett was the most outstanding one as she put forward the cultural turn in translation studies. She also believed that translation is not an activity between two languages but an exchange between two cultures.

Therefore, under the framework of Susan Bassnett#8217;s cultural translation theory, the author will explore different translating strategies Goldblatt had adopted in the translation of cultural-loaded words in the Big Breasts and Wide Hips. This book is one of the greatest works written by Mo Yan which is embodied in all kinds of cultural-loaded words. This distinct feature makes Big Breasts and Wide Hips a perfect case to study the translation of cultural words. This paper hopes to study the related translation methods that are adopted in cultural words translation and come up with some suggestions for the translation of cultural-loaded words in the future.

1.2 Need for the Study

Big Breasts and Wide Hips is a novel by Mo Yan. It won Dajia Prize in 1997 with the highest amount of reward of 100,000 renminbi(roughly $12,000). In it, with undaunted perseverance and passion, Mo Yan has narrated the historical evolution of Chinese society in a work that covers nearly the entire twentieth century. It is a literary masterpiece in the author#8217;s distinctive style. Mo Yan said: ”If you like, you can skip my other novels, but you must read Big Breasts and Wide Hips. In it I wrote about history, war, politics, hunger, religion, love and sex” (New York: Arcade, 2001).

The most arresting feature of Mo Yan#8217;s works lies in the vital cultural root-seeking theme. Through his vivid and unique portrayal of rural objects and lives, mostly in his hometown Northeast Gaomi Township, Mo Yan presents us his distinct understanding of Chinese countryside#8212;an ancient, everlasting and suffering land. And these features in his novels are manifested in cultural-loaded words employed in his works, which almost pervaded every chapter of his novels.