Creative Rebellion: Rewriting and Reconstruction in Translation through the English Version of Frog

Abstract

In traditional translation theory, "faithfulness" is regarded as the core criterion for evaluating the quality of a translation, and translators are often expected to faithfully convey the original text while remaining “invisible”. However, with the cultural turn and the development of translation criticism, the translator’s agency and creativity have increasingly come to the fore. The view that “translation is rewriting” challenges fidelity centrism, emphasizing that translation is a process of re-creation shaped by ideology, aesthetic standards, and cultural context. This study examines Mo Yan’s representative work Frog and its English version , drawing on André Lefevere’s theory of rewriting to explore the translator’s creative acts of defiance during the translation process. This paper focuses on adjustments to linguistic style and the reconstruction of culturally loaded language in the translation, analyzing how the translator reshapes the text’s meaning within the target culture. Through a close reading and comparison of the source text and the translation, it demonstrates that the English translator, Howard Goldblatt did not mechanically reproduce the source text when handling sensitive themes, stylistic rhythm, and cultural metaphors, but rather engaged in strategic omissions, transformations, and re-creations within the context of the local target culture.