In the process of overseas dissemination of modern Chinese literature, promoting positive literary images of characters is conducive to the construction of China’s international image. Focusing on the English translation by Howard Goldblatt, this article explores how the image of Gugu, the obstetrician and the protagonist of Frog, is reshaped and changed in the process of translation. Based on a self-built Chinese-English parallel corpus of the works, alongside theories of semantic prosody and narratology , as well as online readers’ comments from English countries, the study finds that Howard Goldblatt has made adaptations in narrative focalization , narrative voice and character discourse, all of which result in a more negative image of Gugu. This indicates that besides the western social context, the translator’s emotional intervention has played an important role in reconstructing the image of Gugu. Therefore, it is imperative to probe the criteria for image reconstruction, with translators being expected to rationally manage their emotions during the translation process to retain and reproduce the original images.