Translated Literature Field & Translator’s Habitus: Promotion of Mo Yan’s Novels in the Context of World Literature

Abstract

The reading and influence of Mo Yan’s novels are beyond the scope of their own culture and are accepted and recognized by scholars and ordinary readers under the recommendation of western mainstream media publishing houses and Sinologists, despite the fact that there is usually a very low status for Chinese-English translation literature in the western foreign literature translation field, and the translated literature from other languages occupies a rather marginal position in the multicultural literature field of western countries. Using the Sociotranslotological concepts of
‘Field’, ‘Cultural Capital’ and ‘Habitus’, this paper analyzes the elements which promote Mo Yan’s works into world literature with the focuses on translators’ habitus in the translated literature field. It is found out that the cultural capital and habitus of Howard Goldblatt, the English version translator of Mo Yan’s works have great contribution in pushing Mo Yan’s novels into the west literature field and promoting their worldwide reading and influence.