A Brief Remark On Adaptation Theory And Faithfulness Approach

Pragmatics is a new domain of linguistics, which studies the relationship between the language use and the language user. Nowadays more and more scholars in the linguistic field and the translation circle are paying close attention to translation exploration from the angle of pragmatics. In translating, the translator and translation practice are constrained by many factors. Jef.Verschueren, secretary-general of the International Pragmatics Association in his new production advances the theory of linguistic adaptation. He understands and elucidates pragmatics from a totally new viewpoint. He holds pragmatics studies the language use, which is the process of linguistic choice-making, and the linguistic choice-making usually refers to contextual adaptability, structural adaptability, dynamics of adaptability and salience of adaptability.Theory of adaptation was put forward in 1999, which has been made use of in the study of translation ever since, and becomes a fashionable translation theory. As we know theory of adaptation has great impact on traditional translation theories. The theory itself is rational and summarizes translation practice somewhat scientifically. But, since the introduction of the theory to China, unfortunately some people just pursue fashion blindly. It seems to them that the purpose of translation is only to satisfy adaptation to the readership. As a matter of fact those people don't realize the essence of the theory of adaptation. So in this thesis the author mainly studies adaptability and the relationship between adaptation and faithfulness in translation practice. We first analyze the four major points of adaptability: contextual adaptability, structural adaptability, dynamics of adaptability and salience of adaptability. Contextual adaptability includes any ingredients of the communication context and linguistic context with which linguistic choices are inter-adaptable. Structural adaptability includes structures at any layer or level of organization as well as principles of structuring. The dynamics of adaptability is the unfolding of adaptive process in interaction. And the salience of adaptability is the status of those processes in relation to the cognitive apparatus. These four major points can be seen as necessary ingredients of an adequate pragmatic perspective on any given linguistic phenomenon. And we also list three features of adaptation—choice-making, variability and creativity. Then we illustrate the application of the theory of adaptation in translation practice. Finally, the author suggests that adaptation is not without limitation in translation practice and we sincerely hope the above discussion has certain implications for translation study, that is, if only we realize that adaptation is only a translation phenomenon and faithfulness is the essence of translation, we can do a better job in translation practice.