A Study on the English Translation and Reception of Vernacular Language from the Perspective of Chinese Local Literature: A Case Study of Mo Yan’s Novels

Abstract

Against the backdrop of globalization, international cultural exchanges are growing closer. With distinctive regional features and folk connotations, Chinese rural literature serves as a vital carrier for cross-cultural communication and a crucial medium for the world to understand Chinese grassroots society. As the essence of rural literature, vernacular language embodies regional customs and the wisdom of ordinary people, functioning as a key medium to showcase indigenous Chinese culture. Taking Howard Goldblatt’s English version of Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out as the research object, this paper adopts functionalist Skopos theory as the sole theoretical foundation to analyze translation strategies for dialect terms, rural address forms and other vernacular expressions. The paper explores the translator’s logic of balancing cultural authenticity and target readers’ acceptability guided by the rules of Skopos Theory, and summarizes existing problems and optimized approaches in vernacular translation. The research aims to resolve cross-cultural translation difficulties and offer theoretical and practical references for the English translation and global dissemination of Chinese rural literature.