Eco-translatology In The Translation Of Children's Literature

The fairy tale Wind in the Willows by Grahame.K has been translated into twenty different versions at least since it was firstly introduced into China, of which some poor and unfavorable versions have been dying away gradually as time goes by, whereas the versions by Ren Rongrong and Yang Jingyuan stand the test of time, becoming so popular among readers that no other translations can surpass them, thus the phenomenon is worth considering.Traditional researches about good translation versions usually focus on the choice of translational strategies and methods instead of paying attention to the reasons for such choices, which is prone to the subjectivity of the research results. In 2008. the theory of translation as adaptation and selection proposed by Prof. Hu Gengshen dissects the translation process from the perspective of ecology, attributing the adoption of translational strategies to two reasons, one is the translators' adaptation to the demand of translational eco-environment, and the other is the translators' adaptive selection according to the requirement of translational eco-environment. The theory deems that the translation activity, like all the other activities in the nature world, should adapt itself to "nature", which hereby refers to every element affecting translation and is defined as the "translational eco-environment" composed of the source language, target language, source language text (SLT), target reader, the publisher, the investor, the social environment of the translator's time and so on. The theory also holds the opinion that the translator's choice of the target language text (TLT) is based on his or her adaptation to the various translational eco-environment, if the translator cannot well adapt himself or herself to the translational eco-environment, the TLT that he or she chooses will be doomed from the start. On the basis of this theory. the eco-translatology forms its own approach to researching translation by studying the translation process, translation strategies and methods adopted by translators in the course of translation from macroscopic angle. The eco-translatology guides researchers to evaluating the quality of the translated versions from their translation processes in which the good versions result from the translator's outstanding adaptation to translational eco-environment while the poor ones are due to his or her bad adaptation.The research subjects of the thesis are to probe into the reasons for the popularity of Ren and Yang's versions and demonstrate the explanatory force of eco-translatology in TCL (translation of children's literature). Based on the theoretical framework of eco-translatology, the thesis takes the approach of collecting information about the translators and comparative studies on the two translated versions, aiming to certify that the good versions will be those that are guided by eco-translatology.First, the thesis illustrates eco-translatology systematically in order to prove that this theory can be applied to the analysis of TCL. because the translational eco-environment composed of the translators" qualification, the style of SLT. the target readers, and the ideology of the translators" time greatly affects the translator's adaptation, according to which, the choice of the TLT will be directly influenced, thus the author feels it is reasonable to halve the translation process into two steps in later discussion.Then the author analyzes the translation process step by step through the information collection and comparative studies. In the step of adaptation, the translator needs to adapt himself or herself to various kinds of translational eco-environment, which is creatively divided into the inner translational eco-environment and the outer translational eco-environment by the author. The former refers to all the factors relevant to the translators themselves, including the motivation of translation, the interest in and the understanding of the CL (children's literature), the translator's bilingual competence and ability of intercultural communication, the latter contains the style of SLT, the particularity of children and the social ideology of the translator's time. In this step, the outer translational eco-environment is under change all the time, the key point is to make sure that the translator can adapt himself or herself to the changing outer translational eco-environment. In the step of selection, the translator will select proper translation strategies and translation methods in order to adapt his or her version to the translational eco-environment. The translator should not only take the style of SLT and the need of children into account, but also consider the impact of social environment on the choice of translation strategy. Through the illustration of examples, the author proves that the translation strategy of taking the domestication as focus and foreignization as supplement can effectively meet the demands of translational eco-environment and successfully realize the transformation in linguistic dimension, cultural dimension and the dimension of communication as well.On the basis of the analysis and illustration. the author of the thesis believes that: first, the versions of Ren and Yang's meet the demands of translation eco-environment in their time as well as nowadays; second. the TCL can be studied from the angle of macroscopic view, the excellent versions of TCL will be the yield of practicing of eco-translatology; third, there is no doubt that the TCL can be explained by eco-translatology, by which the translations of many other types of writings can also be explained in the author's opinion. thus it provides a new perspective for translation study in the future.