Adaptation And Selection

The past half century witnessed the fast development of translation theories.Many scholars both at home and abroad paid much attention to and studied differenttranslation theories and practice. In2004, Professor Hu Gengshen from TsinghuaUniversity put forward a new translation theory, namely, the approach to translation asadaptation and selection based on Darwinist Evolution Theory. The main idea of thetheory is that translation is a translator’s selective activity to adapt to the translationaleco-environment, and that the process of translation is the cyclic alternations ofadaptation and selection. In terms of translation methods, Professor Hu thinks thatunder the guidance of the principle of multi-dimensional adaptation and adaptiveselection, a translator should make adaptive selection and transformation from threedimensions which are linguistics, culture, and communication.Many of Shen Congwen’s literary works reflect his rich imagination and hisemotion to art. His novel The Border Town is acclaimed as “an indelible pearl throughall ages”. A lot of scholars have made endeavor on studies of The Border Town.However, there are not many studies on its English versions, especially from theperspective of translation as adaptation and selection. As a result, based on this theory,this thesis analyzes The Border Town translated by Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang toprove the new theory’s interpretation power in the translating process and itslimitations. Under the guidance of the approach to translation as adaptation andselection, the paper analyzes The Border Town meanwhile verifies the approach to translation as adaptation and selection’s interpretation power in the translatingprocess.Through the analysis of the terms such as “translational eco-environment”,“selective adaptation” and “adaptive selection”, the applicability of the approach totranslation as adaptation and selection to the analysis of The Border Town of itsEnglish version is proved in this thesis. Then the thesis analyzes the English versionfrom linguistic and non-linguistic adaptation and selection of translation methods andstyle in order to provide a new angel to understand The Border Town. Although thethesis needs to be improved somewhere, it attests that the approach to translation asadaptation and selection is a theory with strong operation. If this theory is brought intothe analysis of translation, translators will have a better command of the relevancebetween source texts and translated texts.Through the analysis, the author comes to the conclusion that when translatingThe Border Town Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang try their best to adapt to their“translational eco-environment”. The translators make selective adaptation fromlinguistic and non-linguistic aspects and adaptive selection from the view oftranslation methods and style, producing a version acceptable by the target readers. Itshows that the approach to translation as adaptation and selection is powerful intranslation studies. What’s more, translation is not an activity just translatinglanguages but involves such other factors as culture and so on. In The Border Town,there are a lot of words and expressions reflect Chinese culture. In order to make thewestern readers accept and understand the Chinese culture, Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang make great efforts. However, the approach to translation as adaptation andselection itself has limitations. For example, during the process of translation, it isdifficult to analyze “adaptation” and “selection” separately because there are manyoverlaps in these two parts. Consequently, it is necessary to make further study on theapproach to translation as adaptation and selection.